In the summer of 1584, Raleigh, his imagination aglow with brilliant colonisation schemes which should eclipse those of Spain, sent out an expedition to explore the coast of the new continent. On July 13, the party, under Captains Amadas and Barlowe, took possession of the territory which Raleigh subsequently named Virginia, in honour of the Queen. In the following year a second expedition was despatched, conveying one hundred and seven souls, whom, with Master Ralph Lane at their head as the governor of the new colony, Raleigh had inspired with his own ardent hopes and plans for the founding of a new settlement that should, in course of time, rival the Spanish conquests. The adventure, however, was not attended with the success anticipated. The party remained in the new territory from August 17, 1585, to June 18, 1586, when Sir Francis Drake, with his fleet, returning along the coast from his victorious raid in the West Indies, called at their port, and, learning their discontent, brought them back to England. They took care, however, not to return empty-handed; a large quantity of tobacco, which the natives had prepared for them, was stowed on board the vessels, with a variety of instruments for preparing and using it. It can well be imagined that Master Lane would take pride in exhibiting himself to London’s gazing multitude smothered in Indian clouds. The learned Camden speaks of Lane as the original English smoker. It is remarkable that there should have been so much uncertainty, even in Eliza-Jacobean times, as to the date when tobacco was first received in this country and the person by whom it was first introduced. The painstaking annalist, Stow, says that tobacco came into England about the twentieth year of Queen Elizabeth (1577). But Aubrey, speaking of Sir Walter Raleigh, says that ‘he was the first that brought tobacco into England and into fashion (1686). In our part of North Wilts—_e.g._ Malmesbury Hundred—it came first into fashion by Sir Walter Long. They had first silver pipes. The ordinary sort made use of a walnut shell and a straw. I have heard my grandfather, Lyle, say that one pipe was handed from man to man round the table. Sir Walter Raleigh, standing in a stand at Sir Ro. Poyntz parke at Acton, took a pipe of tobacco, which made the ladies quitte it till he had donne.’ The author of a gossipy _Tour in Wales_ (Pennant), in 1810, speaking about the great houses and their associations, says that Captain Price, of Plasyollin, with Captains Myddelton and Koet, on their return from the Azores in 1591, ‘were the first who had smoked or (as they called it) drank tobacco publicly in London, and that the Londoners flocked from all parts to see them. Pipes were not then invented, so they used the twisted leaves, or segars. The invention is usually ascribed to Sir Walter Raleigh. It may be so, but he was too good a courtier to smoke in public, especially in the reign of James.’ Again, in the 1659 translation of Dr.