better--than the thing attempted. As Columbus, looking for Indian spices,
found America; as seekers of all nations, in their quest for a Northwest
Passage, charted and developed the continent: so Sir Walter Raleigh and
his companions, hunting for gold along the northern Atlantic seaboard,
took the first steps toward founding the colonies which were in the sequel
to constitute the germ of the present United States.

Queen Elizabeth was on the throne of England; more than ninety years had
passed since Columbus had landed on his Caribbean island. In 1565 a colony
of French Huguenots at St. Augustine had, by a characteristic act of
Spanish treachery, been massacred, men, women, and children, at the order
of Melendez, and the French thus wiped out of the southern coast of North
America forever. While England remained Catholic, the influence of Papal
bulls in favor of Spanish authority in America, and matrimonial alliances
between the royal families of Spain and England, had restrained English
enterprise in the west. Henry VIII. had indeed acted independently both of
the Spaniard and of the Pope; but it was not until Elizabeth's accession
in 1558, bringing Protestantism with her, that England ventured to assert
herself as a nation in the new found world. Willoughby had attempted, in
1553, the preposterous enterprise of reaching India by sailing round
Norway and the north of Asia; but his expedition got no farther than the
Russian port of Archangel. In 1576 and the two succeeding years, Martin
Frobisher went on voyages to Labrador and neighboring regions, at first
searching for the Northwest Passage, afterward in quest of gold. The only
result of his efforts was the bringing to England of some shiploads of
earth, which had been erroneously supposed to contain the precious metal.
In 1578, Sir Humphrey Gilbert had obtained a patent empowering him to
found a colony somewhere in the north; his object being rather to develop
the fisheries than to find gold or routes to India. He was stepbrother of
Sir Walter Raleigh, and the latter started with him on the first voyage;