But a storm, which continued for many days, came upon them; the promised bark was driven to sea; the open roadstead, where the larger ships were compelled to anchor, made Roanoke an undesirable location, and as the time had long expired when the promised reinforcements should have arrived from England, this disappointment, together with the hostilities of the Indians, so discouraged the leaders of the colony, that they solicited and obtained from Drake a passage to England.  On the nineteenth of June, after a little less than a year’s residence in the new land, they all sailed for home, and Roanoke Island was left in solitude.

It is somewhat singular that with all the wars, famine, and privations of these adventurers, not a solitary death occurred during the time they spent here.

It certainly speaks much for the salubrity of the climate, as well as for the care of the officers who were in command.  They all arrived safely in England, about the last of July.[O]

[Foonote O:  After Lane returned home, he obtained some celebrity as a soldier, in various wars, and was knighted.  His narrative, addressed to Raleigh, as printed in Hakluyt, would prove him possessed of much energy.  As the first Governor of an American colony, his name has been kept in remembrance.  Had the supply-ship arrived but a few weeks sooner, he might have remained, and his colony have been the progenitors of the English race on this continent.]

Among the eminent men who accompanied Lane, and passed nearly a year at Roanoke, was Thomas Hariot, an Oxford scholar and a celebrated mathematician.  He went out in the expedition as historian and naturalist, to make a topographical and scientific survey and report of the country and its commodities, duties fulfilled by him in the most faithful manner.  His report was published in London, in 1588, under the title of A Brief and True Report of the New-found Land in Virginia, of the Commodities found there, etc. It was, in 1590, put into Latin, and published by Theodore de Bry, at Frankfort, with about thirty curious engravings, from the designs of John White, the artist who accompanied the expedition.  These pictures are exceedingly well executed, by eminent Dutch artists, and a number of them give undoubtedly the exact portraits of many of the principal Indians, with their costumes and habits, as they were before they were changed by intercourse with the Europeans, showing us their original condition.

The Aborigines were certainly further advanced in agriculture and civilization than has been generally supposed, and probably much more than the tribes who resided further north.  To all who are curious in the history of the early inhabitants of North-America, this work will be found of extraordinary interest.  It may be observed that the maps of the coast which it contains are remarkably correct, and at the same time indicate many important changes to have since occurred.  But its greatest value is its description