ow these her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms
And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,
If England to herself do rest but true.

CHAPTER XI

RALEIGH AND THE VISION OF THE WEST

Conquerors first, prospectors second, then the pioneers: that is the
order of those by whom America was opened up for English-speaking
people. No Elizabethan colonies took root. Therefore the age of
Elizabethan sea-dogs was one of conquerors and prospectors, not one of
pioneering colonists at all.

Spain and Portugal alone founded sixteenth-century colonies that have
had a continuous life from those days to our own. Virginia and New
England, like New France, only began as permanent settlements after
Drake and Queen Elizabeth were dead: Virginia in 1607, New France in
1608, New England in 1620.

It is true that Drake and his sea-dogs were prospectors in their way. So
were the soldiers, gentlemen-adventurers, and fighting traders in
theirs. On the other hand, some of the prospectors themselves belong to
the class of conquerors, while many would have gladly been the pioneers
of permanent colonies. Nevertheless the prospectors form a separate
class; and Sir Walter Raleigh, though an adventurer in every other way
as well, is undoubtedly their chief. His colonies failed. He never found
his El Dorado. He died a ruined and neglected man. But still he was the
chief of those whom we can only call prospectors, first, because they
tried their fortune ashore, one step beyond the conquering sea-dogs,
and, secondly, because their fortune failed them just one step short of
where the pioneering colonists began.

A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one but all mankind's epitome

is a description written about a very different character. But it is
really much more appropriate to Sir Walter Raleigh. Courtier and
would-be colonizer, soldier and sailor, statesman and scholar, poet and
master of prose, Raleigh had one ruling passion greater than all the
rest combined. In a letter about America to Sir Robert Cecil, the son of
Queen Elizabeth's principal minister of state, Lord Burleigh, he
expressed this great determined purpose of his life: _I shall yet live
to see it an Inglishe nation_. He had other interests in abundance,
perhaps in superabundance; and he had much more than the usual
temptations to live the life of fashion with just enough of public duty
to satisfy both the queen