ncerning the state, not only
in his own country, and the disposition of his own men, but also
of his neighbors round about him, as well far as near, and of the
commodities that each country yielded. When I had him prisoner
with me for two days that we were together, he gave me more
understanding and light of the country than I have received by all
the searches and savages that I or any of my company have had
conference with.' 'He told me that by going three days' journey up
the Chowanook, (Chowan,) you are within four days' journey over
land north-east to a certain king's country, which lays upon the
sea; but his greatest place of strength is an island,[M] as he
described to me, in a bay, the water round about it very deep.

... He also signified to me that this king had so great a quantity
of pearl as that not only his own skins that he wears and his
gentlemen and followers are full set with the pearl, but also his
beds and houses are garnished with them.' 'He showed me certain
pearl the said king brought him two years before, but of the worst
sort. He gave me a rope of the same pearl,[N] but they were black
and nought;--many of them were very large, etc. It seemed to me
that the said king had traffic with white men that had clothes as
we have.' ... 'The king of Chowanook promised to give me guides to
go into that king's country, but he advised me to take good store
of men and victual with me.' ... 'And I had resolved, had supplies
have come in a reasonable time, to have undertaken it.'

He goes on to state that he would have sent two small pinnaces to the
northward, to have discovered the bay he speaks of, while he, with all
the small boats and two hundred men, would have gone up the Chowanook
with the guides, whom he would have kept in manacles, to the head of the
river, where he would have left his boats, and raised a small trench
with a palisado on it, and left thirty men to guard the boats and
stores. Then he would have marched two days' journey, and raised another
'sconce,' or small fort, and left fifteen or twenty men near a
corn-field, so that they might live on that. Then, in two days more, he
would have reached the bay, where he would have built his main fort, and
removed his colony.

It is interesting, at this time, to see how Lane would, with the caution
and boldness of a good soldier, have passed up the broad estu