1590.] WHITE'S LAST VOYAGE. War be 253 tween EngSpain. land and soon White reached home England was busy from one end to the other in raising recruits for the army to resist the threatened Spanish invasion; every ship in her ports was pressed into the naval service in one capacity or another. Sir Francis Drake, who, that year, cruising along the coasts of Spain destroyed a hundred of her ships, wrote to Lord Burleigh: "Assuredly there never was heard of or known so great preparations as the king of Spain hath and daily maketh ready for the invasion of England." In the summer of 1588 the Armada of one hundred and forty ships was in the Channel; Raleigh, as he had been among the foremost to arouse, arm, and drill the people to repel the invaders, so now he was on board the fleet that went to meet them on the sea. The "Invincible Armada ceased to terrify England, and though Philip of Spain, when he learned of its dispersion and partial destruction, swore he would waste his crown to the value of a wax candle but he would drive Elizabeth from the throne he claimed as his own,1 Drake was heard of ere the year was over harrying the Spaniards again on their own coasts. White, meanwhile, succeeded in getting off in April, 1588, to the relief of the colony with two vessels and fifteen new planters. But they went no further than a few leagues north of the Madeira Islands, where, in an encounter with the Spaniards, so many of the men were wounded and the pinnaces so disabled that they were compelled to return to England. It had been first proposed to send a larger expedition under Sir Richard Grenville, but the ship was stopped by Order of Council, and Grenville himself ordered for service against the Armada. It was only by importunity that White was allowed to sail with these two small pinnaces, and it was not till 1590 that he was permitted to make another attempt to get back to his colony. White goes to the relief In February of that year, hearing that three ships belonging to a London merchant were ready for sea on a voyage to the West Indies, but detained by general Order of Council, he procured of the coltheir release through the influence of Raleigh. The condi- ony. 1590. tion was that they should carry a reasonable number of passengers and land them in Virginia; but this was fulfilled only so far as to take White alone. They sailed in March; spent four months in a cruise against the Spaniards among the West India Islands, capturing some prizes, and arrived at Wocokon on the 9th of August. Six days later the ships anchored in Hatorask harbor, having spent one night on the way off the Island of Croatoan. At Hatorask White was cheered with the sight of a great smoke rising in the direction of 1 Rapin's History of England, vol. ix. 2 See the first edition of Hakluyt, of 1589, p. 771. The voyage is not mentioned in the second edition of 1600, which contains White's narrative of his visit to Roanoke in 1590. Roanoke Island, and the next morning salutes were fired at proper intervals to let the colonists know of the arrival of their countrymen. Boats put off for the island, but before they reached it another column of smoke in another direction raised fresh hopes. This they steered for, but having consumed the day in reaching the place where it seemed to rise it proved a delusion. Neither men nor signs of any habitation were found. A disaster the next day well nigh put an end to all further attempts to reach Roanoke. The boats were sent ashore at Hatorask for water; the surf was heavy in the inlet, one of the boats was upset, and two of the captains of the ships and five others were drowned. So disheartened were the sailors at this mishap that they refused at first to go on, and this determination was with difficulty overcome by the will and authority of White and the remaining captain. It was night before they reached Roanoke and approached the spot where White expected to find his friends. Glimmering through the trees they saw the light of a fire, and for a moment their hopes were kindled White's col- into enthusiasm. Approaching it along the shore the notes of a trumpet-call from the boats rang clear and shrill through the silent woods; the sailors sung out in cheering tones the familiar words of English songs which would have so stirred the blood of any listening Englishmen long exiled from home. But there was no answer. The light of the distant fire still flickered above the dim line of the forest; but out of the darkness came no friendly shout of men, no woman's glad cry of joy and welcome. Search for ony. They landed at day-break; the fire they had seen was from burning grass and rotting trees, kindled, no doubt, by the Indians whose fresh foot-prints were found in the sand. Pushing through the woods toward the spot where White had left his colony three years before, they saw the letters C R O, carved upon the trunk of a tree, upon the brow of a hill. Pausing to consider what this might mean, White remembered that when he left the colony it was proposed that the people should remove to the main land, and that wherever they went the name of the place should be left behind them here upon trees or door-posts. It was further understood that should any misfortune have overtaken them, they should carve beneath the name a cross. Here then was the guide, if CRO meant Croatoan, to the place whither the colony had removed, though it was to an outer island rather than to the main. But to the anxious father and governor there was this encouragement, the sign of the cross was wanting. Again they pushed on after a brief consultation upon the "faire Romane letters curiously carved," which White had thus explained. It was not far to the deserted post, still surrounded with its palisades. 1590.] Here all doubts were removed: at the entrance, upon one of the largest of the trees from which the bark had been stripped, was The deserted carved in capital letters, the word CROATOAN in full, and fort. still without the cross. Within the palisades the houses were gone, but scattered about were bars of iron and pigs of lead, some large guns with their balls "fowlers" and "sacker shot," they were called, — and other things too heavy for a hasty removal, all overgrown with grass and weeds. In a trench not far off were found some chests where they had been buried by the colonists and dug up afterward by the Indians; among these were three belonging to White, but all had been rifled; books were torn out of their covers, the frames of pictures and of maps were rotten with dampness, and a suit of armor was almost eaten up with rust. "Although it much grieved me," says White, "to see such spoyle of my goods, yet on the other side I greatly joyed that I had safely found a certaine token of their [the colonists] safe being at Croatoan, which is the place where Manteo was borne, and the Savages of the Island our friends." End of White's search for the missing colony. It was his only consolation - if he really believed that his friends, among whom was his daughter, had found any such refuge. The boats had hardly regained the ships at Hatorask when a gale of wind with a heavy sea set in, and in attempting to get under way one of the ships lost her anchors and was near going ashore. The water casks, which had been taken to the land to be filled, could not be brought off; provisions were short, the sailors were despondent and impatient, and it was determined to abandon all attempts to go to Croatoan in further search of the colony, but to sail at once to the West Indies and recruit. White was only a passenger, and could probably do nothing to change this determination, though his friends, if still alive, were not many miles distant. He may, indeed, have been doubtful if they were still alive, for the ships on their arrival on the coast had stopped at Wocokon, had sailed along the shores of Croatoan, and anchored for a night off the north end of the island. Had there been any survivors of the colonists there, they could hardly have failed, on the look-out as they would always have been for succor, to see the passing vessels and have made their presence known by signals of some sort. But no signs had been seen of living men; no columns of smoke curled up above the trees; no flags of distress were descried; no friendly Indians beckoned them to land; no sound of gun or shout broke the silence of the wilderness. At Roanoke alone, in the one word Croatoan carved upon the trees, and in the crumbling vestiges of the colony, half buried in the rank growth of two or three summers, were there any evidences that Englishmen had ever been there-tokens, also, that they had perished. |