em to England. He yielded to their wishes. They
embarked June 18th, and July 27th they landed once more on the shores of
their mother-land.

Thus, after a residence of nearly twelve months in Virginia, the first
colonists deserted the country which had been offered as containing all
that the heart of man could desire. Little was gained by their abortive
attempt beyond an increased knowledge of the New World, and another
lesson in the great book of depraved human nature.

It would be pleasing to the lover of Virginia to be able to record the
final good-fortune of Walter Raleigh, but nothing resulted from his
patent except successive disaster and an appalling consummation. The
determined knight had sent a ship to seek the colony; and this arrived
after the disheartened settlers had sailed with Sir Francis Drake, and,
thus finding the island deserted, it returned to England. Two weeks
afterward Sir Richard Grenville arrived with two ships well-appointed,
but no flourishing settlement greeted his eager eyes. Unwilling to
abandon the semblance of hope, he left fifteen men on the island, well
provided with all things essential to their comfort, and then spread his
sails for England (1587).

In the succeeding year Raleigh prepared for another attempt. Convinced
that the Bay of Chesapeake, which had been discovered by Lane, afforded
greater advantages for a colony, he directed his adventurers to seek its
shores, and gave them a character of corporation for the city of
Raleigh--a name that North Carolina has since, with merited gratitude,
bestowed upon her most favored town. John White assumed command of this
expedition, and they were soon in the waters of Virginia (July 22d). The
cape to which maritime terrors have given an expressive name threatened
them with shipwreck, but at length they arrived in safety at Hatteras,
and immediately despatched a party to Roanoke to seek the settlers left
by Sir Richard Grenville. A melancholy silence pervaded the spot--the
huts were yet standing, but rank weeds and vines had overspread them,
and striven to reclaim to the wilderness the abortive efforts of human
labor. Not one man could be found, but the bones of one unhappy victim
told in gloomy eloquence of conflict and of death. From the reluctant
statements of the natives, they gathered the belief that these men had
either all perished under the attacks of overwhelming numbers, or had
gradually wasted away under the approaches of diseas