or gold-mines and for the South Sea, and
found neither. The natives laid a plot to massacre the settlers, but
Lane's soldierly precaution saved the colonists. Grenville was
expected to return with supplies by Easter, but Easter passed and
there was no news. In order to get subsistence, Lane divided his men
into three parties, of which one remained at Roanoke Island and the
other two were sent respectively to Hatteras and to Croatoan, an
island just north of Wokokon.

Not long after Sir Francis Drake, returning from sacking San Domingo,
Cartagena, and St. Augustine, appeared in sight with a superb fleet of
twenty-three sail. He succored the imperilled colonists with supplies,
and offered to take them back to England. Lane and the chief men,
disheartened at the prospects, abandoned the island, and July 28,
1586, the colonists arrived at Plymouth in Drake's ships, having lost
but four men during the whole year of their stay.[11]

A day or two after the departure of the colonists a ship sent by
Raleigh arrived, and about fourteen or fifteen days later came three
ships under Sir Richard Grenville, Raleigh's admiral. Grenville spent
some time beating up and down Pamlico Sound, hunting for the colony,
and finally returned to England, leaving fifteen men behind at Roanoke
to retain possession.[12] This was the second settlement.

The colonists who returned in Drake's ships brought back to Raleigh
two vegetable products which he speedily popularized. One was the
potato,[13] which Raleigh planted on his estate in Ireland, and the
other was tobacco, called by the natives "uppowoc," which he taught
the courtiers to smoke.

Most of the settlers who went with Lane were mere gold-hunters, but
there were two who would have been valuable to any society--the
mathematician Thomas Hariot, who surveyed the country and wrote an
account of the settlement; and John White, who made more than seventy
beautiful water-colors representing the dress of the Indians and their
manner of living. When the engraver De Bry came to England in 1587 he
made the acquaintance of Hakluyt, who introduced him to John White,
and the result was that De Bry was induced to turn Hariot's account of
Virginia into the first part of his celebrated _Peregrinations_,
illustrating it from the surveys of Hariot and the paintings of John
White.[14]

If Raleigh was disappointed with his first attempt at colonization he
was encouraged by the good report of Virginia given b