as judge
in the island Court. Faculties and energy with him were elastic. He
always had leisure for new labours.

[Sidenote: _Maritime Enterprises._]

Above all, his schemes of colonization were never intermitted. Down to
1603 he went on sending expeditions to Virginia. He was as solicitous
for Guiana. In October, 1596, he had despatched from Limehouse his
pinnace, the Watt, under Captain Leonard Berry. Mr. Thomas Masham's
account of the voyage is in Hakluyt. Berry further explored the country.
He collected fresh evidence of its fertility, salubrity, and riches, and
of the goodwill of the natives towards Englishmen. He returned in June,
1597. His departure from Guiana was accelerated by the importunities of
his Indian friends for an alliance with them against a hostile tribe. He
feared such a league might prove embarrassing on Ralegh's next visit.
Before the Queen's death Ralegh equipped yet another expedition, under
Captain Samuel Mace, to look after both his potential dominions of
Virginia and Guiana. It effected nothing; but the failure was powerless
to impair Ralegh's faith in the value and feasibility of his
discoveries.

[Sidenote: _Irish Pipe Staves._]

[Sidenote: _Sale of Lismore._]

In addition to his many public or semi-public toils, he was busy with a
host of private affairs. Until a short time before the Queen's death he
owned an extensive Irish as well as an English estate. Property was
always for him an incentive to labour. While he had his Irish property
he developed it in every possible way. Lismore Castle, which he rented
from the See and Chapter of Lismore, he rebuilt. In 1589 he had written
to George Carew: 'I pray, if my builders want, supply them.' His factory
employed a couple of hundred men in the fabrication of hogsheads. By his
influence with the Privy Council he often obtained, in favour of ships
which he freighted, a waiver of the restraint of 'the transportation of
pipe staves out of the realm of Ireland into the Islands,' that is, the
Canaries, and to Seville. The thinnings, he said, of his vast woods
sufficed for the supply of materials. He denied that he denuded the land
of timber. Against that wasteful and impoverishing practice he
constantly remonstrated. There had not been taken, he stated to the
Lords of the Council, the hundredth tree. Sir John Pope Hennessy holds a
different view, and asserts that no man cut down more timber, to the
irreparable hurt of the land. His principle o