Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Patent: Harriot and Lane

Harriot was a man of keen observation, and looked upon everything with the eye of a Christian philosopher. He perceived that the way to have the country permanently "inhabited by English," and supplied with "horses and kine," was to treat the natives kindly as friends and neighbors. He deprecated the conduct of Grenville, and tried to quench the fires of revenge which the leader's cruelty had enkindled. The Indians were curious and credulous. Many of them regarded the persons of the English with reverence and awe. Their fire-arms, burning-glasses, mathematical instruments, clocks, watches, and books seemed to the savage mind like the work of the gods. The colonists were never sick and had no women with them, and so the natives imagined that they were not born of woman and were there-fore immortal--men of ancient days who had risen to immortality. Taking advantage of this feeling, Harriot displayed the Bible every-where, told them of its grand and precious truths, and inspired them with such a love for it, that they often pressed it affectionately to their bosoms. King Wingina became very ill. He sent for Harriot, who found him in his bough-covered cabin on a couch of soft moss, with a priest making mysterious movements over the invalid, a "medicine man" offering him a decoction from a calabash, and a dancing juggler contorting his body and grimacing fearfully to drive away the Evil Spirit. Wingina dismissed all of these attendants, placed himself under the care of Harriot, and asked the prayers of the English. He recovered, and his example was followed by many of his subjects.

Had the other colonists been as wise and good as Harriot, all might have been well. But they were greedy for gold. Governor Lane had the fever, and all trusted more to their fire-arms than to friendship for the good-will of the Indians. The natives were treated with scorn and sometimes with cruelty, which kept alive the flame of vengeance. Seeing the Englishmen's greed for gold, they told them marvellous stories of a land at the headwaters of the Roanoke which was filled with the precious metals, and where the houses were lined with pearls. They told them that the source of the Roanoke was in a rock so near the Pacific Ocean, that sometimes the salt waves dashed over into the fountain. All this was told that the English might go in search of that land, and so divided and weakened, the Indians might fall upon and destroy them. The red men guessed shrewdly, for Lane believed their stories, and with a large number of followers went up the swift stream of the Roanoke, until he was satisfied that he had been deceived by pure fictions. He turned back, and his sudden reappearance discomfited the Indians, who had planned an attack upon the divided settlers. Their wrath was only checked, but not subdued. They regarded the fire-arms of the English as demons, and that the great sickness which then prevailed as the effects of wounds given by invisible bullets that came from unseen agents in the air. Believing that more Englishmen were coming to take their lands, they so yearned to exterminate the intruders that they could not conceal their enmity.

Lane, impressed with the belief that there was a wide-spread conspiracy to destroy his colony, prepared to strike the first blow. He invited Wingina and his principal chiefs to a friendly conference. They showed their confidence in the strangers by appearing without weapons. At a preconcerted signal, Lane and his followers fell upon the Indians and murdered the king and all of his companions. Thenceforth each party stood on the defensive, and very soon the condition of the English became desperate. Their provisions were exhausted; no ships came from England with supplies, and no food could be obtained from the Indians. Only the woods and waters offered them a precarious subsistence, and they were on the verge of despair, when they saw, one day, the joyful apparition of white sails coming in from the sea. It was the fleet of Sir Francis Drake, who was returning from his raid upon Spanish towns and settlements, and looked in upon the colonists that he might report their condition to his friend Raleigh. He offered them aid and encouragement, but they were so thoroughly despondent that they begged and received permission to return to England in the baronet's ships.

Whilst they were in Virginia, Lane and his associates had acquired a taste for smoking tobacco, a habit which prevailed among the natives; and they were the first persons who carried the plant into England. The Spaniards and Portuguese had introduced it on the continent. Raleigh adopted and encouraged its use in England, and very soon the habit became so widespread that the demand exceeded the supply. It became the staple product of Virginia and a bond of union between England and some of her American colonies, as well as a source of much revenue. It is said that Queen Elizabeth became Raleigh's apt pupil in the art of smoking tobacco. One day whilst she and the courtier and two or three others were indulging in the habit, Raleigh offered a wager that he would ascertain the weight of smoke that should issue from her lips in a given time. Elizabeth accepted the challenge. Raleigh weighed the tobacco that was put in her pipe, and then weighed the ashes that remained in it; the difference in the weight he assigned as the weight of the smoke. The queen, laughing, acknowledged that he had won the wager, and said he was the first alchemist she had ever heard of who had succeeded in turning smoke into gold.