ax which was to behead him, and smiled, remarking, "A sharp medicine to
cure me of my diseases!" Such are the exploits of kings.

Raleigh was the first man who perceived that America was to be the home
of a white people: that it was to be a dwelling-place, not a mere
supply-house for freebooters and home traders. He resolved to do his part
toward making it so; he impoverished himself in the enterprise; and though
the colony which he planted in what is now North Carolina, but was then
called Virginia, in honor of the queen, who was pleased thus to advertise
her chastity--though this failed (by no fault of Raleigh's) of its
immediate object, yet the lesson thus offered bore fruit in due season,
and the colonization of the New World, shown to be a possibility and an
advantage, was taken up on the lines Raleigh had drawn, and resulted in
the settlement whose heirs we are.

In 1585, after receiving the favorable report of a preliminary
expedition, Raleigh sent out upward of a hundred colonists under the
command of Sir Richard Grenville, one of the heroic figures of the time, a
man of noble nature but fearful passions. They landed on the island of
Roanoke, off the mouth of the river of that name, and were well received
by the native tribes, who thought they were immortal and divine, because
they were without women, and possessed gunpowder. It would have been well
had the English responded in kind; but within a few days, Grenville, angry
at the non-production of a silver cup which had been stolen from his party
during a visit to a village, burned the huts and destroyed the crops; and
later, Lane, who had been left by Grenville in command of the colony,
invited the principal chief of the region to a friendly conference, and
murdered him. This method of procedure would not have been countenanced by
the great promoter of the expedition; nor would he have encouraged the
hunt for gold that was presently undertaken. This was the curse of the