In June, 1586, Sir Francis Drake appeared with twenty-three vessels. He had made a rich haul from Spanish treasure-ships in the West Indies, and had turned aside on his return trip, curious to see how his friend Raleigh's colony fared. Yielding to the importunities of the settlers, he took them aboard his fleet and carried them back to England. They had been gone from Roanoke but a few days, when a ship, bringing supplies sent out by Raleigh, sailed into the inlet, only to find the place deserted. In another fortnight, Grenville appeared with three well-furnished ships, and left fifteen men on the island to renew the colonizing experiment. Sidenote: Raleigh's second attempt. Raleigh displayed most remarkable persistence. He was undismayed by this long chapter of disasters. Men on whose judgment he relied brought back good reports from the site of the ill-fated colony, and again he fitted out an expedition,--this time entirely at his own charge, for Elizabeth had had enough of the experiment. It was in July, 1587, when John White arrived with Raleigh's new colonists off the shores of North Carolina. At Roanoke, deer were quietly grazing in a field fertilized by the bones of Grenville's contingent of the year before, and the fort was in ruins. Governor White re-established the settlement. Sidenote: Birth of Virginia Dare. The 18th of August the daughter of White, Eleanor Dare, gave birth to a daughter, called Virginia, after the country,--the first child of English parents born on the soil of the United States. A few days later, White left for England,--ostensibly for recruits and supplies, the colony which he left behind being composed of eighty-nine men, seventeen women, and two children. But England was now threatened with invasion from Spain; the energy and resources of the island were being mustered in its defence; Raleigh, Drake, Grenville, Frobisher, Hawkins, and the rest were engaged in preparing to resist the enemy. It was no time for colonization schemes. The Armada scattered, the father of English colonization in America found himself ruined, having spent £40,000 in his several fruitless ventures. Still hopeful, he next adopted a scheme of making large grants in Virginia to merchants and adventurers, and in this manner obtained some aid. Sidenote: Wreck of the colony. In 1591 White returned to Roanoke, to find it again deserted, with no traces of his daughter or of the other colonists. They had probably been overcome by the Indians, and those whose lives were spared adopted into the neighboring tribes. In spite of the many costly attempts, the sixteenth century closed with no English settlement on the shores of America. Sidenote: Causes of English failures thus far.