until another colony could
arrive, he left fifteen men on the island with provisions for two
years, and he returned to England. Those fifteen men are supposed to
have been murdered and captured by the Indians, as the next colony
found only some bones, a ruined fort, and empty houses in which deer
were feeding.

The leaving of those fifteen men is considered the second attempt at
colonization, and is recognized as a failure. But all success is built
only by persistent repetition of effort, and so, in 1587, another
colony came from England to this same island of Roanoak. Among those
colonists were seventeen women and nine children, thus proving the
intention of making permanent homes, and the hope of establishing
family ties which should for all time unite England and North America.
A few days after the arrival of this colony at Roanoak, Virginia Dare
was born,--she being the first child born of English parents on the
soil of North America,--and because she was the first child born in
Virginia she was called Virginia. Her mother, Eleanor Dare, was the
daughter of John White, the governor of the colony, and the wife of one
of the assistant governors.

The Sunday following her birth she was baptized, this being another
fact of official record.

By Sir Walter Raleigh's command the rite of baptism had been
administered, a few days earlier, to Manteo, an Indian chief, who had
visited England with a returning expedition, as previously mentioned.
This baptism of the adult Indian and of the white infant were the first
Christian sacraments administered in North America, and are worthy of
commemoration.

The colonists soon found that to make possible and permanent their home
in a new land many things were needed more than they had provided. So
at their urgent request their leader, Governor White, grandfather of
Virginia Dare, consented to return to England to secure the needed
supplies, with which he was to return to them the following year. When
White reached England he found war going on with Spain, and England
threatened with an invasion by the famous Spanish Armada. His queen
needed and demanded his services, and not until 1590--three years
later--did he succeed in returning to America. When at last he came the
colonists had disappeared, and the only clue to their fate was the word
"Croatoan," which he found carved on a tree; it having been agreed
between them that if they changed their place of abode in his absence
they