who
had the means and the experience of merchants, or rather he extended to
them the rights enjoyed under his patent and exercised by him in giving
the charter for the "City of Raleigh." With this assignment he gave one
hundred pounds for the propagation of Christian principles among the
savages of Virginia.

But the energetic soul of Raleigh no longer ruled, and doubtful zeal
impelled the assignees. Not until March, 1590, could Governor White
obtain three ships for his purposes; and though their names might have
incited him, by the motives both of earthly hope and religious trust,
yet he preferred an avaricious cruise among the West India Isles to a
speed which might, peradventure, have preserved the life of his
daughter. He arrived at Hatteras August 15th, and sought the settlers
left there three years before. The curling smoke of grass and trees in
flame gave them encouragement, but they sought in vain their
long-neglected friends. On the bark of a tree was found the word
"Croatan," legibly inscribed, and White hoped, from the absence of the
cross, which he himself had suggested as a sign of distress, that the
settlers were still in being; but as they proceeded to Croatan a furious
storm arose and drove them from the coast, and their dismayed spirits
could find no relief except in a return to England.

No lingering trace has ever marked the fate of this unhappy colony. The
generous Raleigh in vain sent five successive messengers to seek and
save. They were gone, and whither no tongue was left to tell. Modern
ingenuity may be indulged in the forlorn suggestion that they were
amalgamated among their savage neighbors, but sober thought will rather
fear that they perished under the mingled weight of famine, of
disappointed hope, and of Indian barbarity.

DRAKE CAPTURES CARTAGENA

HE "SINGES THE KING OF SPAIN'S BEARD" AT CADIZ

A.D. 1586-1587

JULIAN CORBETT

Sir Francis Drake (born in Devonshire about 1540; died in 1596),
greatest of the Elizabethan seamen, has been the subject of perhaps
equal praise and blame at the hands of the world's historians. So
famous were his exploits, and so scanty the actual knowledge of them
in his own time, that "he was not dead before his life became a
fairy-tale." But history has distinguished fact from legend in the
life of this naval hero, whose undisput