This colony, owing to contentions with the natives and other causes, did not thrive; and in August of the same year White was, much against his wish, induced to return to England for assistance. He failed in his first attempt to go back with aid. In 1593 he gives, at Hakluyt's request, an account of a voyage he made thither in 1590, but which quite failed in its object. The men with whom he embarked showed a greater disposition towards buccaneering, than to assist him in his search for the unfortunate colonists. He found traces of their having gone to the Island of Croatan; but his associates would not prosecute the search, and poor White, with a sad heart, was obliged to leave them, if they even then survived, to their fate. From that day to this no intelligence has ever been got as to what became of them. This voyage was made, if not under Raleigh's auspices, at all events with his assistance. It has been supposed by some that this voyage of White in 1590 was the _last_ attempt made by Raleigh to succour his colonists--he has even been reproached with it. This, however, was not the case. At p. 1653. vol. iv. of Purchas, a very brief account is given of a ship having been purchased by Raleigh and sent out under the command of-- "Samuell Mace (a sufficient marriner who had been twice before at Virginia), to fynd out those people which he had sent last thither by Captain White in 1587." The ill success of the previous attempts to communicate with the colony seems to have been ascribed to the practice which prevailed in that day of engaging seamen for the voyage with a share in the profits; this Raleigh attempted to remedy by hiring "all the cumpanye for wages by the month." I quote from Strachey's _Virginia_, printed by the Hakluyt Society from an original MS., whose statement bears undoubted marks of being the original from which Purchas took his account, and somewhat abridged it. In spite of Raleigh's precautions as to the hiring, the people behaved ill, and-- "They returned, and brought no comfort or new accesse of hope concerning the lives and safety of the unfortunate English people, for which only they were sett forth, and the charg of this employment was undertaken."