and saw to it that a
man of such spirit should be kept at court. The ardent boy of Devon, the
restless Oxford student, the wild Huguenot trooper, had grown to be a
man worthy of notice.

He was now, as Walter Scott pictures him in "Kenilworth," the young
seeker after royal favor, graceful, slender, restless, somewhat
supercilious, with a sonnet ever ready on his lips to delight his
friends or an epigram to sting his enemies.

We shall see him turn his many talents to great uses. He fell to
planning voyages across the Atlantic to discover and settle parts of
North America much as Sir Humphrey Gilbert had done, and as another
young man about court, Sir Francis Drake, was doing. From the Queen, and
from one noble or another who was interested in his marvelous schemes,
he obtained the money to fit out several expeditions. Each in turn
landed near what is now the Roanoke River, and each brought back rich
gifts to the great English Queen. Among other things the explorer saw
the Indians smoking a dried leaf called tobacco, tried the custom, liked
it, and brought it back with him to England.

Raleigh had a stroke of genius when he named his colony Virginia, in
honor of Elizabeth the Virgin Queen. It pleased her to think that a
great empire in the western world should be named for her. She gave
Raleigh whatever he asked, making him practically governor of all the
English domain in America, and for a long time Virginia was supposed to
cover even part of what later became New England. He started to colonize
the land, but his colonies did not succeed, and he lost all the money he
put into them. Nevertheless his Virginian scheme brought him a great
deal of fame, which he now craved, and kept London talking of him.

London was soon to talk still more about this daring, brave, and
brilliant Westcountryman. The prophecy of the old sailor at Budleigh
Salterton Bay came true, and for a brief time all England held its
breath while the famous Spanish fleet, called the Armada, bore down upon
her coast. Then all over the country gentlemen of fortune manned ships
and put to sea, but especially the men of Devon, of Somerset, and
Cornwall, counties famed for their sailors.

Among these men was Raleigh; his advice was eagerly sought by the
Queen's ministers, and when it came to the actual Channel fighting he
made one of many gallant captains. The great Armada came to grief upon
the English coast, and Raleigh had added another to his record