forty thousand pounds of his estate in the vain attempt to colonize Virginia, was compelled to relinquish the enterprise to others-assigning certain of his rights to a company of London merchants Such delay, however, occurred, in fitting out a fresh expedition, that it was not until 1590 that White returned to Roanoke; but the settlers had disappeared; and though Raleigh, it is said, sent to search for them on five several occasions, no trace of the fate of this lost colony has ever been found. Probably, like the former, it perished from Indian hostility. Strangely enough, all the efforts of one of the most intelligent, wealthy, and persevering men of England to effect a settlement in America proved ineffectual. Sir Walter Raleigh, besides his repeated efforts in behalf of Virginian colonization, had aided the northwest voyages, destined to end in results alike futile, and, in his old age, broken down by imprisonment and suffering, headed an equally fruitless expedition to the Orinoco and the tropical coasts of Guiana. Whatever his errors as a courtier and a favourite, history will do him justice as a statesman, a soldier, a mariner, a discoverer, and a founder of colonization-the most brilliant character of a remarkable age; and America, in especial, will always look back with reverence and affection on the earliest and most persevering promoter of her welfare-a man whose faults were those of the time, whose virtues were his own; and who, in addition to the shining attributes of a head to plan and a hand to execute, possessed the more endearing quality of a heart to feel and to commiserate. Such repeated loss and mortality had now made men wary of undertaking American colonization. "All hopes of Virginia thus abandoned," says a later adventurer, "it lay dead and obscured from 1590 to this year 1602." In March of that year Bartholomew Gosnold, under the advice of Raleigh, tried the experiment of sailing directly to America, instead of taking the circuitous route of the Canaries and West Indies. Singular to relate, the experiment succeeded; and after a voyage of seven weeks, in a small vessel, the navigator came to Massachusetts. He landed on Cape Cod, and on the Vineyard islands, and having freighted his little bark with sassafras obtained by traffic from the Indians, returned in June to England. Enterprise, stimulated by his success, was renewed, in the diminutive vessels. of the day, and much of the eastern sea-board was surveyed. Such voyages, familiarizing navigators with the coast and the most desira ble localities, prepared the way for fresh attempts at settlement. While her rivals, long ere this time, had succeeded in gaining a permanent footing on the shores of the New World, and had conquered or founded wealthy empires in the south, England, her claims and her endeavours chiefly confined to the more barren and inclement regions of the north, had as yet reaped nothing but loss and misfortune from her enterprise in the New World. Not a single spot on that vast continent now mostly peopled by her children, was the settled habitation of an Englishman. "In reviewing the history of American colonization, the mind is at first struck with the wonderful brilliancy and rapidity of Spanish discovery and conquest during the first century of their career; an impression naturally followed by the reflection that in the end no substantial advantage has accrued to the nation whose enterprise laid open the pathway to the New World, and whose valour and genius were the first to avail themselves of its tempting opportunities. Extermination of the native inhabitants, bigoted exclusion of foreigners, and, in the end, outrageous oppression of her own dependencies, have marked, almost without exception, the colonial administration of Spain, and have finally resulted in its nearly complete annihilation. Her once numerous provinces, alienated by mismanagement and tyranny, have found, in republican anarchy, a questionable relief from parental misrule; while that beautiful island, almost the solitary jewel in her crown, and only proving, by its exception, the general rule of her losses, is held by a tenure so insecure as hardly to deserve the name of possession. "For an hundred and ten years, the rival nations of France and England hardly took a step in the same direction, or, if they did, under circumstances of such gross ignorance and infatuation, as were almost certain to preclude the possibility of success. The various and widely-severed colonies of France, founded, through a century of misfortunes and discouragements, by ardent and indefatigable servants of the crown, have, with one or two insignificant exceptions, slipped from her hands-not from any want of loyalty or national affection in the provincial inhabitants, but from the feebleness of the French marine, ever unable to compete with that of her haughty rival, and quite inefficient for the protection and retention of distant colonies. "England, the last to enter on the noble enterprise of peopling the New Hemisphere, but finally bringing to the task a spirit of progress, a love of freedom, and a strength of principle, unknown to her predecessors, has founded, amid disastrous and unpromising beginnings, an empire mightier and more enduring than all or any of its compeers; lost, indeed, for the most part, to her private aggrandizement, but not to the honour of her name or the best interests of mankind; an empire already prosperous beyond all example in his tory, and destined, it is probable, at no distant day, to unite under its genial protection every league of that vast continent stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the tropical forests of Darien to the eternal snows of the Arctic Circle." 11 *Discoverers, &c., of America. THE SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA. CHAPTER I. MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH.-HIS YOUTHFUL ADVEN TURES AND SERVICES. HE TURNS HERMIT.HIS ADVENTURES IN FRANCE.- -HE IS FLUNG OVERBOARD.-SEAFIGHT. TRAVELS IN ITALY. HIS CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE TURKS. SIEGE OF REGALL.-THE THREE No account of American, and still less of Virginian colonization, would be complete without some memoir of that remarkable man to whose unwearied personal exertions the foundation of an English commonwealth in this country is almost entirely due. Romance would hardly venture to imagine adventures more marvellous, or courage more chivalrous than his; and when to a temper the most sprightly, adventurous, and enterprising of his day, were added the unsurpassed qualities of judgment, of perseverance, of fortitude, and of forbearance, the result could hardly fail to be a character of no ordinary greatness, and the work of his life a work destined in some manner to affect the interests of mankind. His extraordinary career, fortunately detailed, in good part, with modest quaintness, by his own pen, will ever remain the delight of youth, and the admiration of the historical reader. Captain John Smith, incomparably the greatest and most famous of English adventurers in America, was born of a good family at Willoughby, Lincolnshire, in 1579. His mind, from childhood, set on adventure and travel, at the age of thirteen, he secretly sold his books and satchel, and was about going off to sea, when interrupted by the death of his father. His guardians apprenticed him to a merchant of Lynn, whom, in consequence of refusal to gratify his taste for the sea, he speedily quitted, and with his young patron, the son of Lord Willoughby, went into France. Thence he repaired to the Netherlands, then engaged in their struggle against Spanish tyranny; and served some three or four years under Captain Duxbury-an Englishman, commanding, it would seem, in the service of Prince Maurice. He sailed to Scotland, but was shipwrecked at Holy Isle, and finding no chance of preferment at the Scottish court, again betook himself to Willoughby. Here, by one of those freaks common to ardent and imaginative youth, he chose to turn hermit -though rather after the fashion of Friar Tuck than the recluse of Warkworth. In a great wood, far from the town, he built himself a shelter of boughs, where, without bedding, or any of the conveniences of civilized life, he made his abode. In the curt language of his narrative, (which, like Cæsar's, runs in the third person,) "His studie was Machiavills Art of Warre, and Marcus Aurelius; his exercise a good horse, with his lance and ring; his food was thought to be more of venison than anything else; * * Long these pleasures could not content him, but hee returned againe to the Low Countries"-intending to make his way to the east of Germany, then distracted with Turkish warfare, and fight on the side of Christen dom. At this time he was only nineteen. he * Taking ship for France, he was despoiled of all his baggage by four sharpers, and, selling his cloak to pay for his passage, landing in Picardy, went in pursuit of them. Reduced to great distress and poverty, "wandering from port to port to finde some man of warre, spent that he had, and in a Forest, neere dead with griefe and cold, a rich Farmer found him by a faire Fountaine under a tree. This kinde Pesant releeved him againe, to his content." Not long after, passing through a forest, he fell in with Cursell, one of his despoilers. "His piercing injuries had so small patience, as without any word they both drew, and in a short time Cursell fell to the ground, when from an old ruinated Tower the inhabitants seeing them, were satisfied, when they heard Cursell confesse what had formerly passed." We next find the youthful adventurer enjoying the hospitality of a noble earl (who had known him in England) at his chateau in Brittany; whence, apparently better supplied, he travelled over much of France, surveying fortresses and other notable objects of examination. At Marseilles, by ill-fortune, he embarked on board a vessel freighted with "a route of pilgrims, of divers nations," going to |