Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/88

 men discovered the letters "C R O" carved on the trunk of a tree on a little hill. The sight of these letters reminded the leader that the colonists had agreed, should they have to leave the City of Raleigh, to carve the name of the place to which they went on some tree or trunk, and, further, to add beneath the name a cross, in the event of any misfortune having befallen them.

What, then, could the three letters mean? Nothing worse, surely, than that the emigrants had removed to some place the name of which began with them. "Cro—Cro—" repeated one after another, until at length the remainder of the word flashed across the minds of all. The friendly village of Croatoan, already known to White, must be now the home of the lost emigrants. There was no cross beneath the initial letters to damp the delight at this discovery, and the march was resumed. A little further on the full word "Croatoan" was found carved upon a tree, still without the cross; but, in spite of this reassuring token, all further efforts to find the colony were unavailing. The fire had been lighted by Indians, who could give no information; and when after many days of disheartening search, a number of empty chests, frameless pictures, and other relics were found in a trench, White—who seems, to say the least of it, to have been strangely ready to accept the loss of his daughter and grandchild—threw up the search and returned home, without, so far as we can make out, actually visiting the village of Croatoan after all.

This silent disappearance of a colony of white men, including at least one woman and an infant girl, has given rise to many a legend of the presence, among the dusky warriors of the West, of princesses of alien race ruling the simple savages by virtue of their superior intelligence; but though Raleigh sent out expedition after expedition to scour Virginia and the surrounding districts for traces of his lost people, not one trustworthy word was ever obtained as to their fate, though the name of many another Englishman was added to the already long roll of martyrs to the cause of colonization in the West.

With the death by drowning, off Chesapeake Bay, of his nephew, Bartholomew Gilbert, early in 1602, ended Raleigh's direct connection with North America. In 1603, when the loss of his beloved mistress had converted him from a court favorite into a "spider of hell" and a "viperous traitor"—to quote the forcible language of his prosecutor, Coke—the patent, which he had reserved in his own name on the death of his brother, Sir Humphrey,