In the following September, when one of the vessels of the expedition was on its return to England, she encountered a great storm. The crew and passengers were in sore straits on account of the lack of food and water, expecting to perish by famine at sea. On October 16, however, when they had almost given up in despair, they sighted land, which proved to be the coast of Kerry. By the aid of “a hulke of Dublin” they entered Smerwick Bay, where the inhabitants at once succored them. White relates that the whole company was brought ashore at “Dingen a Cos,” where the sick sailors and passengers were taken care of by the local doctor. [Illustration: HON. JOHN S. WHALEN. New York Secretary of State. A MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY. ] The writer of the narrative pays a well-merited tribute to the inhabitants of Smerwick and Dingle for their timely and spontaneous aid. They stayed at Smerwick for over two weeks; there White distributed some potato plants among the people, “the first ever seen in Europe.” It is generally supposed that it was Raleigh who first brought the potato plant to Europe, but according to White’s account, it was he who introduced it, and that it was the inhabitants of the County of Kerry who were the first Europeans to taste the esculent tuber. Could John White, who wrote the official account of, and commanded this expedition, have been an Irishman? His story of the fifth voyage is dated “from my house at Newtown, in Kilmore, the fourth of February, 1593.” There is no such place as Kilmore in England, but there are several such places in Ireland, and the name is distinctively Irish. The town of Dingle, County Kerry, has always been and even is still known to the inhabitants as “Dingen a Cos.” It will be observed that White referred to the town by its Irish, not by its Anglicized appellation, which, to some, may be suggestive that a knowledge of the Gaelic language, which, happily, most Irishmen spoke in those days, was one of the accomplishments of the historian mariner. And is it not highly probable that White and his officers, who came to form such friendly intercourse with the fisher-folk of the Kerry coast, may have informed them of “the great land beyond the sea,” with the result that, on his subsequent voyages to Virginia, he was accompanied by not a few of the hardy natives of the Kingdom of Kerry? After the forfeiture of the immense estates of the Desmonds in Munster in 1584, Raleigh came into possession of 12,000 acres in Cork, Waterford and Tipperary. He built and made his home in the castle of Lismore, and soon after established at the neighboring ports of Waterford and Youghal a large trade in lumber and barrel staves with France and Spain. His ships were largely manned by Irish sailors, and it is entirely within the bounds of probability that Raleigh impressed into his transatlantic crews some of the sailors and fishermen of the Munster coast.