“The Generall permitted them to enter within our bulwarke, where they continued their song and daunce a reasonable time. When they had satisfied themselves they made signes to our Generall to sit downe, to whom the King and divers others made several orations, or rather supplications, that hee would take their province and kingdome into his own hand and become their King, making signes that they would resigne unto him their right and title of the whole land and become his subjects. In which to perswade us the better the King and the rest with one consent and with great reverence, singing a song, did set the crowne upon his head, inriched his necke with all their chains and offered unto him many other things, honouring him by the name of Hioh, adding thereunto as it seemed, a signe of triumph: which thing our Generall thought not meete to reject, because he knew not what honour and profit it might be to our Countrey. Wherefore in the name, and to the use of her Majestie he took the scepter, crowne, and dignitie of the said Countrey into his hands, wishing that the riches & treasure thereof might so conveniently be transported to the inriching of her kingdom at home, as it aboundeth in ye same.” After these ceremonies the general and his company marched up into the country and visited the villages of the natives. They found the land fair and abounding particularly in deer, of which great herds, a thousand in a herd, they reckoned, were seen. The houses in the villages were circular in form. They were “digged about with earth,” and had “from the uttermost brimmes of the circle clefts of wood set upon their joyning close together at the top like a spire steeple.” The beds herein were of rushes strewn upon the ground. The men were almost entirely without apparel, while the women wore a single garment woven of bulrushes with a deer-skin on their shoulders. Of the resources of the region scant report was given beyond this significant statement, which was left to be verified for nearly three centuries: “There is no part of earth heere to bee taken up wherein there is not some probable shew of gold or silver.” Just before his departure Drake nailed upon a “faire great poste” a plate “whereupon were engraven her Majesties name, the day, and yeere of our arrivall there, with the free giving up of the province and people into her Majesties hands, together with her highnesses picture and armes, in a peace of sixe pence of current English money under [beneath] the plate, whereunder was also written the name of our Generall.” And to this record the chronicler adds, to clinch the English claim, “It seemeth that the Spaniards hitherto had never bene in this part of the Countrey, neither did ever discover the land by many degrees to the Southwards of this place.”