ch
confidence in Providence that he left his dear relatives to its care,
and made no attempt to visit Croatan.

Stith says that Raleigh sent five several times to search for the
lost, but the searchers returned with only idle reports and frivolous
allegations. Tradition, however, has been busy with the fate of these
deserted colonists. One of the unsupported conjectures is that the
colonists amalgamated with the tribe of Hatteras Indians, and Indian
tradition and the physical characteristics of the tribe are said to
confirm this idea. But the sporadic birth of children with white
skins (albinos) among black or copper-colored races that have had no
intercourse with white people, and the occurrence of light hair and blue
eyes among the native races of America and of New Guinea, are facts so
well attested that no theory of amalgamation can be sustained by such
rare physical manifestations. According to Captain John Smith, who wrote
of Captain Newport's explorations in 1608, there were no tidings of
the waifs, for, says Smith, Newport returned "without a lump of gold, a
certainty of the South Sea, or one of the lost company sent out by Sir
Walter Raleigh."

In his voyage of discovery up the Chickahominy, Smith seem; to have
inquired about this lost colony of King Paspahegh, for he says, "what he
knew of the dominions he spared not to acquaint me with, as of certaine
men cloathed at a place called Ocanahonan, cloathcd like me."

[Among these Hatteras Indians Captain Amadas, in 1584, saw children with
chestnut-colored hair.]

We come somewhat nearer to this matter in the "Historie of Travaile
into Virginia Britannia," published from the manuscript by the Hakluyt
Society in 1849, in which it is intimated that seven of these deserted
colonists were afterwards rescued. Strachey is a first-rate authority
for what he saw. He arrived in Virginia in 1610 and remained there two
years, as secretary of the colony, and was a man of importance. His
"Historie" was probably written between 1612 and 1616. In the first
portion of it, which is descriptive of the territory of Virginia, is
this important passage: "At Peccarecamek and Ochanahoen, by the relation
of Machumps, the people have houses built with stone walls, and one
story above another, so taught them by those English who escaped the
slaughter of Roanoke. At what time this our colony, under the conduct
of Captain Newport, landed within the Chesapeake Bay, where the
people breed