46 Singing Valleys 



the "greene soils of the hills" but the river sands, from which, 

 remembering the treasure Spain had unearthed in Peru and 

 Mexico, they hoped to dig gold. Leaving their goods on the 

 shore, they waded barefoot into the streams scooping up the 

 gravel with their hands and panning it in the copper saucepans 

 they had brought. Meanwhile, over their heads, floated the 

 golden pollen of the Indian maize fields a dust far richer 

 than any these sands could yield. 



Grenville went on an exploring expedition along the south- 

 ern shore of the Sound. In the course of it he passed through 

 several Indian villages surrounded by "the goodliest come 

 fields that ever were scene in any country." The natives showed 

 themselves not unfriendly. In a village called Aquascogoa, 

 Grenville missed a silver cup from his mess-kit. He promptly 

 accused his hosts of theft, though there is nothing to prove that 

 the culprit was not one of his own crew. Maintaining the 

 British code of the time, which made theft even of articles of 

 little worth a crime to be punished severely, Grenville promptly 

 burned the granaries of Aquascogoa and sent his men into the 

 growing maize fields to spoil the crop, "all the natives having 

 fled." To the Indians, who made the destruction of corn a 

 crime punishable by death, the act must have been horrible 

 to the extreme. 



Having made a demonstration of British law, order and 

 righteousness, Grenville returned to Roanoke and his ships, 

 and sailed for home. He left behind him the little colony to 

 pay the debt of his stupidity. 



But thus far the colonists were all enthusiasm. Ralph Lane 

 wrote to Hakluyt: 



We have discovered the main to be the goodliest isle under the 

 cope of heaven, so abounding with sweet trees that bring such 

 sundry rich and pleasant gums, grapes of such greatness yet wild, 

 as France, Spain nor Italy have no greater; so many sorts of 

 apothecary's drugs, such several kinds of flax, . . . And now within 

 these few days we have found here maize, or Guinea wheat, whose 



