HUMAN RIDDLES THAT HAVE VEXED THE WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 289, 5 December 1936, Page 4 (Supplement)

HUMAN RIDDLES THAT HAVE VEXED THE WORLD.

Virginiai Dare — What Was Her Fate? | "The Red Widow" — French President's Mysterious Death. | ; By VINCENT TOWNE. LOST COLONY. (Copyright.—All Rights Reserved.)

RALEIGH'S ROANOKE. BLACK WALL OF MYSTERY. A BLACK wall of mystery faced" the Jamestown colonists when they landed in Virginia in 1007. Sir "Walter Raleigh had charged them to seek Virginia Dare, the first native •white American, and her follow colonists, upon whom the forest primeval had so mysteriously closed some 20 years before. But only the pines and the hemlocks in the depths of that leafy wilderness could tell whither these lost ones had so strangely vanished, and until Raleigh's head fell upon the block of the executioner it was troubled with •wonder as to the fate of his "lost Roanoke colony." Their Mission. Those 150 men, women and children he had sent to Virginia to' found an agricultural State in 1557. In three ships they had sailed gaily out of Plymouth on a balmy morning of April, but they did not touch their restless feet to the sands of Roanoke Island until the sun of late July had scorched it. Their Governor, John White, brought •with him his daughter, Eleanor, and her husband, Ananias Dare. The colonists had hardly hewn their cabins out of the woods when they had occasion to celebrate the birtli of a daughter to Eleanor and Ananias, and the Governor christened his little granddaughter—the first child of English parents born in the new world —Virginia Dare, in honour of the.new province and of Britain's Virgin Queen. Made Friends With Indians. Having upon his arrival found skele-tons-of an English colony that had preceded him, Governor /White wisely

determined to cultivate the friendship of the I Indians. So CKlef Manteo, who lived some distance away upon iCroatau Island, was given the title of baron and Lord of Roanoke. At the same time Manteo accepted the rites of'the Chris t-ian-baptism, and both his friendship and spiritual redemption appeared to assured. . - : It soon became necessary for the ships that had brought the colony to return to - England for supplies and Governor White went along to hasten their return. He left behind him 80 men, 17 women, and two children. On his way home -he stopped at Ireland, where he gave : the populace some potatoes, the first of that kind ever seen in Europe. He started back with two ships Iftden with the needed supplies, but after he had got out into the open seas his greed for gain caused him" to neglect his Hoanoke colony, so sorely in need of food. . He diverted his course to pursue some Spanish ships in search of plunder, but they so badly battered his little fleet that he had to return to England, where the Spanish blockade of British waters bottled him up ffli". nearly three years. Appalling Discovery. Landing upon Roanoke Island upon a hot day late in the Summer of 1590, he was 'appalled to find an ■absolute desolaV : His heart sank. The entire colony 'had disappeared and even their houses had all been removed. Carved upon:a birch tree, however, he found the one" word "Croatan." Apparently the Christianised Manteo, Lord of Roanoke, ° had;taken pity upon the starving colonists and brought them "to his island stronghold, there to live with his .people. The Governor prepared to visit tliat home of his friend, the Indian baron but the superstitions crews of ■ his ships, terror-stricken by the sight of deserted wastes around them, refused to embark in' that direction. They forced him to TetuTti to England with them, and it was . his;: bitter fate to die in ignorance of wHaJt had happened to his daughter and grandchild. !|g Beliefs. tradition haa it that Chief Manteo of tlle colony except four ho<*n»»> Virginia Dare, who According ° ne of his bravescolony - was ' the entire ' later mterNorth' Carolina h, B "5 1 . anB T of central P e P e tratiTig into -?- 11 Smi th; upon Wn indian villaee ' Cahac

half-breed boy, wH.li'yellow hair, and he believed the child to be thttt ; of one of his colonists intermarried with a red man. Certain blue-eyed Indians found near Cape Hatteras, along the Cape Fear River, are alleged to be descendants of those lost whites. The fate of Virginia Dare remains a mystery quite as dark as it was three centuries ago.