letters on one of the chief posts, but unaccompanied by the sign of
distress which had been agreed on.

Croatan was the name of an Indian town on the north side of Cape
Lookout, and for that place, the fleet weighed anchor the next day.
Meeting with a storm, and several accidents, they were discouraged
from proceeding on their voyage, and, determining to suspend their
search, returned to the West Indies.

The company made no farther attempt to find these lost colonists; nor
has the time or the manner of their perishing ever been discovered.[9]

[Footnote 9: Robertson. Chalmer. Stith.]

{1602}

[Sidenote: Voyage of Gosnald.]

The subsequent voyages made by the English to North America were for
the sole purpose of traffic, and were unimportant in their
consequences, until the year 1602, when one was undertaken by
Bartholomew Gosnald, which contributed greatly to the revival of the
then dormant spirit of colonising in the new world. He sailed from
Falmouth in a small bark with thirty-two men; and steering nearly
west, reached the American continent, on the 11th of May, in about
forty-three degrees of north latitude.

Finding no good harbour at this place, Gosnald put to sea again and
stood southward. The next morning, he descried a promontory which he
called cape Cod, and, holding his course along the coast as it