e four left
outside, as seen by Menendez, were at the time disembarking their
passengers.

[3] When the French Government learned of this massacre, the event
did not arouse any particular interest. Indeed, the colony seems
not to have had any special protection from the home authorities.
Had the contrary been the case, it would have been easily possible
for the French to have built up a flourishing colony in America
nearly half a century before the English were ever established in
the new world.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S VIRGINIA COLONIES

(1584-1587)

I

THE ACCOUNT BY JOHN A. DOYLE[1]

The task in which Gilbert[2] had failed was to be undertaken by one
better qualified to carry it out. If any Englishman in that age seemed
to be marked out as the founder of a colonial empire, it was Raleigh.
Like Gilbert, he had studied books; like Drake, he could rule men. The
pupil of Coligny, the friend of Spenser, traveler-soldier, scholar,
courtier, statesman, Raleigh with all his varied graces and powers
rises before us, the type and personification of the age in which he
lived. The associations of his youth, and the training of his early
manhood, fitted him to sympathize with the aims of his half-brother
Gilbert, and there is little reason to doubt that Raleigh had a share
in his undertaking and his failure.

In 1584 he obtained a patent precisely similar to Gilbert's. His first
step showed the thoughtful and well-planned system on which he began
his task. Two ships were sent out, not with any idea of settlement,
but to examine and report upon the country. Their commanders were
Arthur Barlow and Philip Amidas. To the former we owe the extant
record of the voyage: the name of the latter would suggest that he was
a foreigner. Whether by chance or design, they took a more southerly
course than any of their predecessors....

Coasting along for about a hundred and twenty miles the voyagers
reached an inlet and with some difficulty entered. They solemnly took
possession of the land in the Queen's name, and then delivered it over
to Raleigh according to his patent. They soon discovered that the land
upon which they had touched was an island about twenty miles long and
not above six broad, named, as they afterward learned, Roanoke.
Beyond, separating them from the mainland, lay an enclosed sea,
studded with more than a hundred fertile and well-wooded islets....

Barlow and Amidas retu