houses; but we found the houses taken down and the place very strongly inclosed with a high palisado of great trees, with curtains and flankers very root-like, and one of the chief trees or posts at the right side of the entrance had the bark taken off, and five feet from the ground in fair capitals was graven, CROATAN, without any cross or sign of distress. This done, we entered into the palisado, where we found many bars of iron, two pigs of lead, four iron fowlers, iron rack shot, and such-like heavy things thrown here and there, almost overgrown with grass and weeds. From thence we went along by the water-side, towards the point of the creek, to see if we could find any of the boats or pinnace, but we could perceive no sign of them, nor any of the last falcons and small ordnance which were left with them. At our return from the creek, some of our sailors, meeting us, told us that they had found where divers chests had been hidden and long since digged up again and broken up, and much of the goods in them spoiled and scattered about, but nothing left, of such things as the savages knew any use of, undefaced. Presently I went to the place, which was in the end of an old trench, made three years past by Captain Amadas. There we found five chests that had been carefully hidden of the planters, and of the same chests three were my own, and about the place many of my things spoiled and broken, and my books torn from the covers, the frames of some of my pictures and maps rotten and spoiled with rain, and my armour almost eaten through with rust. This could be no other but

1590.]

The End of White's Colony in Roanoke.

243

the deed of the savages our enemies, who had watched the departure of our men to Croatan, and, as soon as they were departed, digged up every place where they suspected anything to be buried. But, although it much grieved me to see such spoil of my goods, yet on the other side I greatly joyed that I had safely found a certain token of their safe-being at Croatan, which is the place where Manteo was born, and the savages of the island our friends."

White of course greatly desired to go to Croatan and try to recover the colonists, among whom were his own daughter and grand-daughter. But, after one feeble effort, the captain of the fleet refused to assist him further in his search. Virginia and its English residents were abandoned, and the unworthy people who thus deserted them made a disastrous voyage to Plymouth, which they reached on the 24th of October.

That was the last of Sir Walter Raleigh's Virginia The patent which he had transferred to a company of merchants in 1589, and which apparently was never used by them, passed, in 1602, into the hands of a new and more enterprising company, which, in the following year, sent two small barks to explore the district. The report brought home being satisfactory, the new company was formally incorporated in 1606, and thereupon the real colonization of Virginia was promptly begun. Thence sprang the famous series of English settlements in the United States of America under the Stuarts in the seventeenth century. The first successful colonizing party was led by Captain Christopher

Newport in 1607, who heard from the natives that "the men, women, and children of the first plantation at Roanoke had been miserably slaughtered;" but that some of the English escaped from the slaughter, and going far inland lived peaceably with the natives. In 1607 it was reported there were "seven of the English alive, four men, two boys, and one maid." Perhaps this "one maid" was Virginia Dare, the first English native of America, at that time nearly twenty years of

*

STRACHEY, History of Travaill into Virginia Britannia, ed. by MAJOR for the Hakluyt Society (1849).

CHAPTER IX.

JOHN DAVIS'S THREE VOYAGES IN THE DIRECTION OF CATHAY.

[1585-1587.]

IN 1497 and 1498 John and Sebastian Cabot, searching for a passage to Cathay, sailed northwards, past Newfoundland and Labrador, up to the entrance to Baffin's Bay, and appear to have reached the westernmost promontory of Cumberland Island in 67 degrees of north latitude and about 61 degrees of west longitude. During his three voyages in 1576, 1577, and 1578, Martin Frobisher visited the southern edge of Greenland, and then, crossing over to the broken districts north. of America, confined his researches to the western half of the bay known after him as Frobisher's Straits, in 62 and 63 degrees of north latitude, and between 62 and 64 degrees of west longitude, just discovering, without defining, the mouth of Hudson's Straits. It was reserved for an abler and more fortunate voyager to follow up his exploration of Greenland as far as 72 degrees of north latitude, a hundred and fifty miles further north than the Cabots' furthest point, to trace the rugged coast-line of Cumberland Island between the districts visited by the Cabots and by Frobisher, and to

indicate the broad channel known by his name as Davis's Straits, the only entrance to Baffin's Bay, and the route followed by most later arctic voyagers in search of a passage to the Indies.

He fared better than one of Frobisher's comrades, Charles Jackman, who in company with Arthur Pet, an old associate of Willoughby and Chancelor, set out on the 31st of May, 1580, in pursuit of that north-eastern quest of Cathay which had cost Willoughby and Chancelor their lives. This expedition was organized by the Muscovy Company, being the first of its appointment since the voyage of 1556, in which Stephen Burroughs had sailed along the northern coast of Russia, and passed between Nova Zembla and Vaigats, into the Sea of Kara. Pet and Jackman left Harwich, with two barks, one of forty the other of twenty tons' burthen. At Wardhus in Lapland, they parted company on the 24th of June. Pet reached the upper part of the more southern of the two Nova Zembla islands on the 4th of July, and then, sailing downwards, tried to enter the straits found by Burroughs. Failing therein, he followed the coast of Russia and discovered, on the 17th of the month, the channel between it and Vaigats, henceforth known as Pet's Straits. Thus he entered the Sea of Kara, and after vainly attempting to proceed further westwards through the pack of ice, fell in with Jackman, who had made a passage into the same waters by way of Burroughs' Straits. The partners met on the 24th of July and made another effort to continue their voyage to China. "Winds