A Book of American ExplorersHigginson, Thomas Wentworth
History
A Book of American Explorers
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth
America -- Discovery and exploration; United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
The 18th, Eleanor, daughter to the governor, and wife to Ananias Dare,
one of the assistants, was delivered of a daughter in Roanoke, and the
same was christened there the Sunday following; and, because this child
was the first Christian born in Virginia, she was named Virginia. By
this time, our ships had unladen the goods and victuals of the planters,
and began to take in wood and fresh water, and to new calk and trim
them for England: the planters, also, prepared their letters and tokens
to send back into England....
The next day, the 22d of August, the whole company, both of the
assistants and planters, came to the governor, and with one voice
requested him to return himself into England, for the better and sooner
obtaining of supplies and other necessaries for them; but he refused
it....
Illustration: BAPTISM OF FIRST CHILD IN VIRGINIA.
The governor, being at the last, through their extreme entreating,
constrained to return into England, having then but half a day’s
respite to prepare himself for the same, departed from Roanoke the
seven and twentieth of August, in the morning, and the same day after
midnight came aboard the fly-boat, who already had weighed anchor, and
rode without the bar, the admiral riding by them, who, but the same
morning, was newly come thither again. The same day both the ships
weighed anchor, and set sail for England.
V.――SEARCH FOR THE LOST COLONY.
[It was three years before Governor White returned to the colony
which he had left. He reached the coast of Virginia in August,
1590, and thus describes what followed.]
OUR boats and all things fitted again, we put off from Hatorask, being
the number of nineteen persons in both boats. But, before we could
get to the place where our planters were left, it was so exceeding
dark, that we overshot the place a quarter of a mile: there we espied,
towards the north end of the island, the light of a great fire through
the woods, to the which we presently rowed: when we came right over
against it, we let fall our grapnel near the shore, and sounded with a
trumpet a call, and afterward many English tunes of songs, and called
to them friendly, but we had no answer. We therefore landed at daybreak,
and, coming to the fire, we found the grass and sundry rotten trees
burning about the place. From hence we went through the woods to that
part of the island directly over against Dasamonguepeuk; and from
thence we returned by the water-side round about the north point of
the island, until we came to the place where I left our colony in the
year 1586.[220]
Illustration: THE EXPLORERS LOOKING AT THE TREE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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