Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 76.djvu/114

106  his little grandchild's fourth birthday. It had been agreed that should the colonists leave that spot, they should carve upon a tree the name of the place to which they were going; and if they should add to the name a cross, it would be understood as a signal of distress. When White arrived he found grass growing in the deserted blockhouse. Under the cedars hard by five chests had been buried, and somebody had afterward dug them up and rifled them. Fragments of his own books and pictures lay scattered about. On a great tree was cut in big letters, but without any cross, the word, which was the name of a neighboring island. The captain of the ship was at first willing to take White to Croatan; but a fierce storm overtook them, and after beating about for some days the captain insisted upon making for England, in spite of the poor man's entreaties. No more did White ever hear of his loved ones. Sixteen years afterward the settlers at Jamestown were told by Indians that the white people abandoned at Roanoke had mingled with the natives, and lived with them for some years on amicable terms, until, at the instigation of certain medicine-men (who probably accused them of witchcraft), they had all been murdered, except four men, two boys, and a young woman, who were spared by request or order of a chief. Whether this young woman was Virginia Dare, the first American girl, we have no means of knowing.

Nothing could better illustrate than the pathetic fate of this little colony how necessary it was to destroy the naval power of Spain before England could occupy the soil of North America. The defeat of the Invincible Armada was the opening event in the history of the United States. It was the event that made all the rest possible. Without it the attempts at Jamestown and Plymouth could hardly have had more success than the attempt at Roanoke Island. An infant colony is like an army at the end of a long line of communications: it perishes if the line is cut. Before England could plant thriving estates in America she must control the ocean routes. The farsighted Raleigh understood the conditions of the problem. When he smote the Spaniards at Cadiz he knew it was a blow struck for America. He felt the significance of the defeat of the Armada, and in spite of all his disappointments with Virginia he never lost heart. In 1602 he wrote to Sir Robert Cecil, "I shall yet live to see it an English nation."

John Fiske.



the last paper we saw how badly off for water Mars, to all appearance, is; so badly off that any inhabitants of that other world would have to irrigate to live. As to the actual presence there of such folk, the broad physical characteristics of the planet have nothing to say beyond a general expression of acquiescence, but they do have something very vital to say about the conditions under which alone their life could be led. They show that in these Martian minds there would be one question paramount to all the local labor, women's suffrage, and Eastern questions put together,—the water question. How to procure water enough to support life would be the great communal problem of the day. 