From the Indians, Lane had received intimations of the existence of Chesapeake Bay,[L] and was desirous of visiting it.

The story of this ‘king’ of the Chesapeans was full of interest, he knowing well the route, which Lane communicates, with the plans he intended to carry out, but which the sudden departure of the colony left unfulfilled, so that the great bay remained for a few years longer a mere myth to the English.  Of this native king, Lane says: 

’He is called Menatonon, a man impotent in his limbs, but otherwise, for a savage, a very grave and wise man, and of a very singular good discourse in matters concerning the state, not only in his own country, and the disposition of his own men, but also of his neighbors round about him, as well far as near, and of the commodities that each country yielded.  When I had him prisoner with me for two days that we were together, he gave me more understanding and light of the country than I have received by all the searches and savages that I or any of my company have had conference with.’  ‘He told me that by going three days’ journey up the Chowanook, (Chowan,) you are within four days’ journey over land north-east to a certain king’s country, which lays upon the sea; but his greatest place of strength is an island,[M] as he described to me, in a bay, the water round about it very deep.

...  He also signified to me that this king had so great a quantity of pearl as that not only his own skins that he wears and his gentlemen and followers are full set with the pearl, but also his beds and houses are garnished with them.’  ’He showed me certain pearl the said king brought him two years before, but of the worst sort.  He gave me a rope of the same pearl,[N] but they were black and nought;—­many of them were very large, etc.  It seemed to me that the said king had traffic with white men that had clothes as we have.’ ...  ’The king of Chowanook promised to give me guides to go into that king’s country, but he advised me to take good store of men and victual with me.’ ...  ’And I had resolved, had supplies have come in a reasonable time, to have undertaken it.’

He goes on to state that he would have sent two small pinnaces to the northward, to have discovered the bay he speaks of, while he, with all the small boats and two hundred men, would have gone up the Chowanook with the guides, whom he would have kept in manacles, to the head of the river, where he would have left his boats, and raised a small trench with a palisado on it, and left thirty men to guard the boats and stores.  Then he would have marched two days’ journey, and raised another ‘sconce,’ or small fort, and left fifteen or twenty men near a corn-field, so that they might live on that.  Then, in two days more, he would have reached the bay, where he would have built his main fort, and removed his colony.