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 and the very least that is implied by the motto Noblesse oblige.  He was splendidly handsome and tall, a perfect blend of strength and grace, full of deep, romantic interest in great things far and near:  the very man whom women dote on.  And yet, through all the seductions of the Court and all the storm and stress of Europe, he steadily pursued the vision of that West which he would make ’an Inglishe nation.’

He left Oxford as an undergraduate to serve the Huguenots in France under Admiral Coligny and the Protestants in Holland under William of Orange.  Like Hawkins and Drake, he hated Spain with all his heart and paid off many a score against her by killing Spanish troops at Smerwick during an Irish campaign marked by ruthless slaughter on both sides.  On his return to England he soon attracted the charmed attention of the queen.  His spreading his cloak for her to tread on, lest she might wet her feet, is one of those stories which ought to be true if it’s not.  In any case he won the royal favor, was granted monopolies, promotion, and estates, and launched upon the full flood-stream of fortune.