The island wears a cluster of historic jewels which should endear it to all patriotic Anglo-Americans. To them it should be the most sacred, the best loved spot in all the United States. There the first English settlements were made which led to English supremacy in the New World. There the first home altar was reared and the first child of English parents in the United States was born and baptized. There the blood of Englishmen first dyed the sod of North America, and there the first attempts at English agriculture were made. There was enacted the tragedy of American colonization, the disappearance of Raleigh's Lost Colony, and there the sacrament of baptism was first administered in the United States. Roanoak Island is a beautiful place, with fertile soil and wild luxuriance of vine-covered forests which are enveloped in a deep solitude which has become dignity. Restless waters ebb and flow by its side, restless winds kiss its bare sand dunes, a genial sun brings to maturity its wealth of tree and vine and shrub. Protected from the storms which ravage the ocean beyond, it sleeps in quiet beauty, content with its heritage of fame as _the first home of the English race in America_. Its isolated position, its wild beauty, its tragic associations, its dignified repose, all seem to have set it aside from the rush of modern progress that it might become a shrine for the homage of a patriotic people. The wonderful fertility of the soil of this island seemed a marvel to the early explorers, all of whom have testified to it. Ralph Lane, governor of the colony of 1585, in writing to Raleigh of the island and the surrounding country, declared it to be "the goodliest soil under the cope of heaven," and that "being inhabited with English no realm in Christendom were comparable to it;" every word of which is true now, provided that the English who inhabit it follow the suggestions of nature and adopt horticulture as the developing means. The surrounding country as well as Roanoak Island has a wealth of climbing vines and clustering grapes which point instinctively to grape culture. Amadas and Barlowe (1584) wrote that they found the land "so full of grapes as the very beating and surge of the sea overflowed them, of which we found such plenty, as well there as in all places else, both on the sand and on the green soil, on the hills as on the plains, as well as on every little shrub as also climbing towards the top of high cedars, that I think in all the world the like abundance is not to be found." [Illustration: A Scuppernong Vineyard, Roanoak Island] Surely no other such natural vineyard was ever found outside the fabled Garden of the Gods!