space permit, would I give details of those brilliant adventures
which make this part of his life that of a true knight-errant. But
they are mere episodes in the history; and we must pass them quickly
by, only saying that they corroborate in all things our original
notion of the man--just, humane, wise, greatly daring and enduring
greatly; and filled with the one fixed idea, which has grown with his
growth and strengthened with his strength, the destruction of the
Spanish power, and colonisation of America by English. His brother
Humphrey makes a second attempt to colonise Newfoundland, and
perishes as heroically as he had lived. Raleigh, undaunted by his
own loss in the adventure and his brother's failure, sends out a
fleet of his own to discover to the southward, and finds Virginia.
One might spend pages on this beautiful episode; on the simple
descriptions of the fair new land which the sea-kings bring home; on
the profound (for those times at least) knowledge which prompted
Raleigh to make the attempt in that particular direction which had as
yet escaped the notice of the Spaniards; on the quiet patience with
which, undaunted by the ill-success of the first colonists, he sends
out fleet after fleet, to keep the hold which he had once gained;
till, unable any longer to support the huge expense, he makes over
his patent for discovery to a company of merchants, who fare for many
years as ill as Raleigh himself did: but one thing one has a right
to say, that to this one man, under the providence of Almighty God,
do the whole of the United States of America owe their existence.
The work was double. The colony, however small, had to be kept in
possession at all hazards; and he did it. But that was not enough.
Spain must be prevented from extending her operations northward from
Florida; she must be crippled along the whole east coast of America.
And Raleigh did that too. We find him for years to come a part-
adventurer in almost every attack on the Spaniards: we find him