ak.

THE FIRST BAPTISM IN THE WILDS OF AMERICA!

How naturally the scene rises before us. The young mother, her heart
thrilling with the mysteries of love and life, and elated with the joy
of motherhood, alert to the dangers of the new land, and suspicious of
the strange people among whom her blue-eyed treasure must live, yet
yielding cheerfully to the busy smiling English women who had crossed
the ocean with her, and now with womanly intuition ministered to her
needs. We can picture them making tidy the confused household, and
stilling the cries of the infant as they prepare her to receive the
sign of the cross. We can almost picture them deliberating over a
choice from among their limited supply of vessels of one worthy to
become the receptacle of the water to be used. It was on the
Sabbath-Day, and the dedication to God of the wee creature who had so
newly come among them was a fitting observance of the day. The solemn
words of the ritual of the English Church, never before spoken in that
primeval forest, must have awakened mysterious vibrations which linger
yet and give to Roanoak Island that atmosphere of perpetual repose
which envelops it. There must have come to those who witnessed the
scene that holy Sabbath-Day, just as it comes now to those who view it
from afar, a deep realization that the God of the English and the Great
Spirit of the Indian are one and the same, then, now, and evermore. The
One God to whom in baptism Virginia Dare was brought and in whose name
Manteo the savage was signed with the cross and given the promise of
salvation, and who remains the God of the millions of English-speaking
people who now worship in the land which was then and there dedicated
to the service of Christ.

The mist of oblivion fades before the light of Truth, and Virginia Dare
will be a shining jewel in the Chaplet of Memories which some day
Christian America will place upon the tomb of the Past.

PREFACE

A familiar knowledge of the history of one's own country increases
patriotism and stimulates valor. For this reason the study of written
records called history should be supplemented by research into myths,
folk-lore, and legends. While the value of history lies ever in its
truth, it must yet bear the ideals of the people who participated in
the events narrated. Tradition was the mother of all history, and was
necessarily robed in the superstitions of the era of which the
tradition tells. History writer