much larger than it is to-day, for many years embraced the
region known as Dare County, and to Currituck belongs the distinction of
having once included within its borders the spot upon which Raleigh's
colonies tried to establish their homes.

The history of that event is too well known to bear repetition. The
story of Amadas' and Barlowe's expedition, of Ralph Lane's bold
adventures in exploration of Albemarle Sound, Chowan River and
Chesapeake Bay, of the return of his disappointed colony to England in
Drake's vessels, and the tragic fate of little Virginia Dare and of John
White's colony, have all been told in fiction, song and verse.

The failure of Raleigh's colonies to establish a permanent settlement
in the New World discouraged the English for many years from making any
further attempts to settle America. From 1590, the date of Governor
White's return to Roanoke, and of his unsuccessful search for the "lost
colony," that lovely island for many years disappears from the white
man's gaze; and save for a few scattered, unrecorded settlements in
northern Albemarle, Carolina itself was almost unknown to the world.

But in September, 1654, according to the Colonial Records, a young fur
trader from Virginia had the misfortune to lose his sloop in which he
was about to embark for the purpose of trading with the Indians in the
Albemarle country. For reasons not stated he supposed she had gone to
Roanoke, so he hired a small boat, and with three companions set out in
search of the runaway vessel. "They entered at Coratoke Inlet, ten miles
to the north of Cape Henry," so reads the ancient chronicle, "and so
went to Roanoke Island, where, or near thereabouts, they found the Great
Commander of those parts with his Indians a-hunting, who received them
civilly and showed them the ruins of Sir Walter Raleigh's fort, from
which I received a sure token of their being there."

A few months before this journey of the young fur trader, Charles II had
bestowed upon eight of his favorites all the territory in America lying
between the thirty-first and thirty-sixth parallels of latitude, a
princely gift indeed, and worthy of the loyal friends who had devoted
their lives and fortunes to the Stuart cause during the dark days when
that cause seemed hopelessly lost. This grant embraced the land adjacent
to the north shore of Albemarle Sound, and extending to Florida; but it
failed to include a strip of territory about thirty miles broad