Raleigh is said to have sent three several times to ascertain their fate, but without any success.  In some of the memoirs of the later Virginia settlements, which have recently been printed, there are references to persons said to have been recovered from Raleigh’s colony on Roanoke, but they are indirect, and only show that tradition was busy with their fate.  There can be no doubt every soul perished on this isolated coast.

The ancient history of Roanoke closed with the departure of Raleigh’s last ship, and the natives resumed possession of their favorite spots.

The Chesapeake was entered, and Jamestown settled, in 1607; and although the bold explorer of the bay and rivers, Captain John Smith, was desirous of sending a party to look after the lost colony, it was never done.  Years passed away, and the grant of Carolina embraced all the country once claimed and occupied by Raleigh and his colonists.

In 1653, an adventurer from Virginia, with a small craft, entered Currituck Inlet and visited Roanoke.  Here he found residing a great Indian chief, with whom he made a treaty of peace and alliance, which led to a purchase of land and to a long intimacy.  A house for the chief was built like the English dwellings, and his son was confided to the English to be educated.  The young chief embraced Christianity, and was baptized.

At this time the ruins of Lane’s fort were plainly visible, and the natives were familiar with its history.

The first permanent settlement in what is now North-Carolina, can not be traced to an earlier date than 1656.  It was on the shores of Albermarle Sound, some forty miles from Roanoke.

Almost coeval with this came small vessels from New-England, to trade, first for furs and peltry, and soon after to exchange their own productions and those of the West-Indies for the tobacco, corn, naval stores, and lumber of the country; and for the succeeding century our people were almost entirely the merchants and carriers of all this region.  As a consequence some of them permanently settled here, and many of the merchants of Boston held extensive tracts of land obtained by grants or purchase.

Our public records contain many references to these, and among others we find a grant of the Island of Roanoke, as early as 1676, to Joshua Lamb, of New-England.  It would seem that it was then settled, and had houses and buildings,[P] and probably had been occupied for many years, and perhaps antedated the settlements before referred to, thus making it the first place permanently settled in North-Carolina.

In 1785, more than a century after, the following appears in the inventory of the estate of a resident of Boston: 

’In the State of North Carolina—­one half of Roanoke Island, valued at L184 6s. 8d.’

Lawson, the very truthful historian of this country, who wrote about 1700, says: