Twenty-one years before we sailed from London, Sir Walter Raleigh sent
out a fleet of seven ships, carrying one hundred and seven persons, to
Virginia, and Master Ralph Lane was named as the governor. They landed
on Roanoke Island; but because the Indians threatened them, and because
just at that time when they were most frightened, Sir Francis Drake came
by with his fleet, they all went home, not daring to stay any longer.
Two years after that, which is to say nineteen years before we of
Jamestown came here, Sir Walter Raleigh sent over one hundred and
sixteen people, among whom were men, women and children, and they also
began to build a town on Roanoke Island.
John White was their governor, and very shortly after they came to
Roanoke, his daughter, Mistress Ananias Dare, had a little baby girl,
the first white child to be born in the new world, so they named her
Virginia.
Now these people, like ourselves, were soon sorely in need of food, and
they coaxed Governor John White to go back to England, to get what would
be needed until they could gather a harvest.
At the time he arrived at London, England was at war with the Spanish
people, and it was two years before he found a chance to get back. When
he finally arrived at Roanoke Island, there were no signs of any of his
people to be found, except that on the tree was cut the word "Croatan,"
which is the name of an Indian village on the island nearby.
That was the last ever heard of all those hundred and sixteen people.
Five different times Sir Walter Raleigh sent out men for the missing
ones; but no traces could be found, not even at Croatan, and no one
knows whether they were killed by the Indians, or wandered off into the
wilderness where they were lost forever.
You can see by the story, that the London Company had set for Captain
Newport a very great task when they commanded him to do what so many
people had failed in before him.
And now out of that story of the lost colony, as Master Hunt told
Nathaniel and me, grows another which also concerns us in this new land
of Virginia.
You will remember I have said that Master Ralph Lane was the governor of
the first company of people who went to Roanoke Island, and, afterward,
getting discouraged, returned to England. Now this Master Lane, and the
other men who were with him, learned from the Indians to smoke the weed
called tobacco, and carried quite a large amount of it home with them.
Not only Sir Walter Raleigh, who knew Master Lane very well, but many
other people in England also learned to smoke, and therefore it was that
when we of Jamestown began to raise tobacco, it found a more ready sale
in London than any other thing we could send over. Once this was known,
our people gave the greater portion of their time to cultivating the
Indian weed.