  THE ENGLISH PEOPLE ATTEMPT TO SETTLE AMERICA English Interest in America Awakened. Voyages like those made by Sir Francis Drake awakened a desire throughout England to learn more about the New World. Until this time even the great discoveries of Columbus and the Cabots had failed to stir the English people to take part in the exploration and settlement of the Americas. The principal reason was because their attention was occupied by the struggle between their monarchs and the popes to decide whether king or pope should govern the English Church. This continued until Queen Elizabeth had been on the throne some years. Other sea-captains, hearing of Drake's success, now turned their ships toward the Americas. Many went to the West Indies, as he had done, mainly to seize the rich plunder to be found on board the ships of Spain bound homeward. Some of them explored the coast of North America, hoping to find valuable regions that had not fallen into the possession of the Spaniards. The Northwest Passage. Martin Frobisher made three voyages, the last in 1578, in search of a passage through North America to China. He entered the bay which bears his name, and the strait which was later called after Hudson, but failed to find a passage. Drake attempted to find the western entrance to such a passage in 1579 as a short cut homeward when he tried to avoid his Spanish pursuers. Gilbert. A grander scheme was planned by Humphrey Gilbert. He wished to build up another England across the sea, just as the people of Spain were building up another Spain. He planned to do this by establishing farms to which he and others might send laborers who could not find work at home. Queen Elizabeth liked this plan, and to encourage him, and to repay him for the expense of carrying the emigrants over, she promised him the land for six hundred miles on each side of his settlements.
Failure of Gilbert's Expedition. Gilbert tried twice to plant a colony in the neighborhood of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Sir Walter Raleigh, his half-brother, was one of his captains in the expedition of 1578. He would have been in the disastrous second attempt in 1583 had not Queen Elizabeth, full of forebodings of danger to her favorite, refused to let him go. As it was he sent a ship at his own cost. Gilbert took a large supply of hobby-horses and other toys with which to please the savages. Mishap, desertion, and shipwreck pursued the luckless commander. The second expedition left Plymouth with five vessels in 1583. The ship that Raleigh sent, the best in the fleet, deserted before they were out of sight of England. One was left in Newfoundland. The wreck of the largest ship, with most of the provisions, off Cape Breton, so discouraged the crews that they prevailed upon Gilbert to abandon the plan to settle on such barren and stormy shores, Gilbert attempted to return on the Squirrel, the smaller of the two remaining vessels. This was a tiny vessel of scarcely ten tons burden. What was left of the little fleet voyaged homeward by the southern way, and ran into a fearful storm as it approached the Azores. Although Gilbert was urged to go aboard the larger vessel, he refused to desert his companions, with whom he had passed through so many storms and perils, and tried to calm the fears of all by his reply, "Do not fear, Heaven is as near by water as by land." One night the Squirrel suddenly sank. All on board were lost. Such was the sad ending of the first efforts to establish an English colony in North America. Raleigh Sir Walter Raleigh took up the interesting plan which his kinsman, Gilbert, had at heart. Raleigh was now at the height of his favor with Queen Elizabeth. She had made him wealthy, especially by the gift of large estates which she had taken from others. She readily promised him the same privileges in America which she had offered to Gilbert. Raleigh doubtless thought that he might increase his fortune and win glory for himself and for his country by planting English colonies in the New World. No man of the age was better fitted for the undertaking. He had shown himself a fearless soldier and an able commander in the war against Spain in the Netherlands. He had fortune, skill, and powerful friends. Like Gilbert, he was a friend of poets and scholars and a student of books; like Drake, he was a natural leader of men.
Virginia. Raleigh began in 1584 by sending an expedition to explore the coast for a suitable site for a colony. His men sailed by way of the Canaries, and came upon North America in the neighborhood of Pamlico Sound, avoiding the stormy route directly across the Atlantic which Gilbert had followed. They found, therefore, instead of the bleak shore of Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, the genial climate of North Carolina and Virginia. They carried home glowing reports of the country. They were particularly pleased with an island in Pamlico Sound called by the Indians Roanoke Island. They noted with wonder the overhanging grape-vines loaded with fruit, the fine cedar trees which seemed to them the highest and reddest in the world, the great flocks of noisy white cranes, and the numberless deer in the forests. The Indians appeared gentle and friendly, Elizabeth was so pleased with the accounts of the country that she allowed it to be called Virginia after herself, the Virgin Queen, and made Raleigh a knight. The first English Colonists. Raleigh made several attempts to plant a colony in Virginia. The most famous one was led by John White in 1587. White had visited Virginia on an earlier voyage, and painted more than seventy pictures of Indian life, representing their dress and their manner of living. These may still be seen in the British Museum in London. His interest in the country and its Indian population made his appointment as governor seem a wise choice. Care was taken in the selection of colonists in order to secure farmers rather than gold-seekers. Twenty-five women and children were included in the colony of about one hundred and fifty persons. Roanoke. White and his followers settled on Roanoke Island. They found that the fort, which one of Raleigh's officers had built some years earlier, was leveled to the ground. Several huts were still standing, but they were falling to pieces. The first task was to rebuild the huts and move into them from their ships. A baby girl was born a few days after the landing, the first child born of English parents in the New World. Her father, Ananias Dare, was one of White's councilors; her mother, Eleanor Dare, was the daughter of Governor White. The baby was given the name Virginia, the name of the country which was to be her home.
The Colonists in Danger. The little colony must have foreseen the hostility of the Indians and a scarcity of food, for before Governor White had been in America two months, he was sent back to England to obtain more provisions, White, from his own account, did not wish to leave his daughter and granddaughter. White's Search for Aid. White returned to England in the fall of 1587 at the wrong moment to ask for aid. All England was alarmed by the rumor that a great Spanish fleet was about to land an invading army. The friends of Virginia in England were too busy protecting their own homes from the invader to give heed to the needs of the farmer colonists across the sea. White traveled through England, seeking aid for his friends and family, but was disappointed everywhere. Why Raleigh gave no Help. Raleigh had by no means forgotten his colonists, but his queen and his country had the first claim on him through the long war with Spain. Twice during this period, he found time and means to prepare relief expeditions for Virginia. The queen stopped the first one just as it was ready to sail, because all the ships were needed at that moment for service in the war. A second expedition was attacked by the Spaniards and forced to return. The lost Colony. White finally secured passage for himself on a fleet going to the West Indies, not with a fleet and relief supplies of his own, but as a passenger on another man's ship. It was the summer of 1591 when he arrived at Roanoke, four years after his departure. The colonists were not to be found. Their houses were torn down. The chests which they had evidently buried in order to hide them from the Indians had been dug up and ransacked of everything of value. White's own papers which he had left behind were strewn about. His pictures and maps were torn and rotten with the rain. His armor was almost eaten through with rust. One trace of the fate of the settlers was left. The large letters CROATOAN were carved on a tree near the entrance to the old fort. White recalled the agreement made when he left four years before. If the colonists should find it necessary to leave Roanoke, they were to carve on a tree the name of the place to which they were going. If they were in danger or distress when they left, they were to carve a cross over the name of the place. White found no cross. The word Croatoan was the name of a small island lying south of Cape Hatteras, where Indians lived who were known to be friendly. White believed his friends to be safe among the Indians at Croatoan, but he could not go farther in search for them because the captains of the ships which brought him over refused to delay longer. They gave many excuses, but were evidently more eager to attack the Spaniards than to find a few luckless emigrants.
The fate of Raleigh's colony is one of the puzzles of history. It is believed that they took refuge with friendly Indians, and lived with them until they lost their lives in war or had adopted the ways of their protectors. Value of the Efforts of the English and the French. Raleigh had failed to carry out his great plan to plant a new England in America, but he had awakened in his countrymen an interest in America, and made known the advantages of its soil and climate. The French had apparently made no greater headway. Cartier's colony on the St. Lawrence had broken up, and the Spaniards had driven the French colony from Florida. The history of Coligny's colony at Fort Caroline, Cartier's at Quebec, Gilbert's on the coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Raleigh's at Roanoke, had shown how useless were attempts to settle in America which were not strongly supported by friends or by the home government. These attempts to plant colonies in America were not, however, as bad failures as they appeared. Both nations had learned much about the country and about the preparations needed for permanent settlements. What the Spanish had accomplished. In 1600 Spain seemed to have achieved much more than either of her rivals. The map of that time shows Spain in possession of vast territories in North and South America. The English had a small tract, Virginia, in which they had some interest but no colonists. The French regarded the St. Lawrence valley as theirs by right of discovery, but they could point to no settlements to clinch that claim. The Spaniards, on the other hand, counted more than two hundred cities and towns which they had planted in their territories. About two hundred thousand Spaniards, farmers, miners, traders, soldiers, and nobles, had either migrated from Spain to America or had been born there of emigrants since Columbus's discovery. Five million Indians had come under their rule, and most of them were living as civilized men, and called themselves Christians. One hundred and forty thousand negro slaves had been carried from Africa to the plantations and mines in Spanish America.
The City of Mexico, the largest in all America, was much like the cities of Spain. Well-built houses of wood, stone, and mason-work abounded. Churches, monasteries, a university, higher schools for boys and girls, four hospitals, of which one was for Indians, and public buildings, similar to those in the cities of old Spain, already existed. Spanish life and Spanish culture had spread over a large area in the New World, and the most remarkable fact was that the Old World civilization had been bestowed on the Indian population. As Roman culture went into Spain and Gaul, so Spanish culture went into a New Spain in a new world. The Prospects of the Spanish Colonies. But the outlook for Spain in America was not wholly bright. Her struggle with her Dutch subjects and the war with England, which grew out of that quarrel, left her completely worn out. She no longer had the people to spare for American settlements. These ceased to grow as they once had. Negroes and Indians outnumbered the Spaniards in most of them. The three races mingled together and intermarried until a new people, the Spanish American, differing in color and blood from either of the old races, was formed. The later Story of Colonization. Spain's rivals--the Dutch, the English, and the French--were just reaching the height of their power. They had settled their most serious religious differences. Their merchants were eagerly looking about for commercial opportunities. A considerable population in each of them, but more especially in England, was discontented and ready to try its fortunes in a new world. The Spaniards had passed by the best parts of North America as worthless. The people and the unoccupied land were both ready for the formation of colonies on a larger scale. In many ways a greater story of American colonization remains to be told. This will be the story of the Dutch, the French, and the English colonization of North America.
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