Most of the settlers who went with Lane were mere gold-hunters, but there were two who would have been valuable to any society—­the mathematician Thomas Hariot, who surveyed the country and wrote an account of the settlement; and John White, who made more than seventy beautiful water-colors representing the dress of the Indians and their manner of living.  When the engraver De Bry came to England in 1587 he made the acquaintance of Hakluyt, who introduced him to John White, and the result was that De Bry was induced to turn Hariot’s account of Virginia into the first part of his celebrated Peregrinations, illustrating it from the surveys of Hariot and the paintings of John White.[14]

If Raleigh was disappointed with his first attempt at colonization he was encouraged by the good report of Virginia given by Lane and Hariot, and in less than another year he had a third fleet ready to sail.  He meant to make this expedition more of a colony than Lane’s settlement at Roanoke, and selected as governor the painter John White, who could appreciate the natural productions of the country.  And among the one hundred and fifty settlers who sailed from Plymouth May 8, 1587, were some twenty-five women and children.

The instructions of Raleigh required them to proceed to Chesapeake Bay, of which the Indians had given Lane an account on his previous voyage, only stopping at Roanoke for the fifteen men that Grenville had left there; but when they reached Roanoke Simon Ferdinando, the pilot, refused to carry them any farther, and White established his colony at the old seating-place.  None of Grenville’s men could be found, and it was afterwards learned that they had been suddenly attacked by the Indians, who killed one man and so frightened the rest as to cause them to take to sea in a row-boat, which was never heard of again.

Through Manteo, a friendly Indian, White tried to re-establish amicable relations with the natives, and for his faithful services Manteo was christened and proclaimed “Lord of Roanoke and Dasamon-guepeuk”; but the Indians, with the exception of the tribe of Croatoan, to which Manteo belonged, declined to make friends.  August 18, five days after the christening of Manteo, Eleanor Dare, daughter to the governor and wife of Ananias Dare, one of White’s council, was delivered of a daughter, and this child, Virginia, was the first Christian born in the new realm.[15]

When his granddaughter was only ten days old Governor White went to England for supplies.  He reached Hampton November 8, 1587.[16] He found affairs in a turmoil.  England was threatened with the great Armada, and Raleigh, Grenville, Lane, and all the other friends of Virginia were exerting their energies for the protection of their homes and firesides.[17] Indeed, the rivalry of England and Spain had reached its crisis; for at this time all the hopes of Protestant Christendom were centred in England, and within her borders the