vessel was overtaken by a Spanish cruiser and
captured. White himself escaped in a boat, and after many days reached
England again. Then he had to wait for another ship, and the weary old
man saw day after day go by before he left the chalk cliffs of England
behind him. After long, anxious months he approached the new land. It was
near sunset and he expected to see the smoke rising from the chimneys and
the settlers hurrying in from the fields to eat their evening meal, or
crowding down to greet the long-looked for arrivals. But no such cheering
sight met his gaze. There stood the cabins, but they were deserted; not a
single human soul was visible. They landed and walked up the grass-grown
paths. Vines and climbers festooned the doorways. A dreary stillness
reigned everywhere. The colony had disappeared, and tradition has it to
this day that the settlers were absorbed in the Indian tribes and that
little Virginia Dare may have become a white Pocahontas.

Raleigh lost his best friend when Queen Elizabeth died, and her
successor, James, gave into other hands the task of establishing English
power in America. The London Company, with a patent from the king, sent a
fleet of three vessels to Virginia, which ascended the James River, and
fifty miles from its mouth laid the foundation of Jamestown, May 13,
1607.

* * *

It was a lovely day in summer, presenting a bright southern contrast to
the bitter winter weather which welcomed the Pilgrims thirteen years
later to Plymouth Rock, when the Englishmen began the erection of a fort
on the peninsula or island in the river, where they proposed to establish
the capital of their colony. They chose for their president Edward Maria
Wingfield, ignoring Captain John Smith, a gallant and resourceful soldier
of fortune who would have been invaluable as a leader against any foe.
The fort had not been completed when the Indians gathered in large
numbers and made a desperate attack on the colony. Twelve of the
colonists were killed and wounded before the savages were driven off by
the use of artillery. In the following winter Captain John Smith explored
the waters in the vicinity of Jamestown in search of a passage to the
Pacific. This may seem ridiculous in the light of present knowledge, but
it is to be remembered that two years later, in 1609, the great
navigator, Henry Hudson, ascended the river which bears his name, in the
expectation of disc