Corn Conquers Virginia 47 



ear yieldeth corn for bread, four hundred upon one ear; and the 

 cane maketh very good and perfect sugar . . ." 

 Your most assured friend, 



Ralph Lane 



From the new fort in Virginia, 

 the 3rd of September, 1585. 



Had the others of the settlement followed Lane's example 

 and turned their attention to the produce of the land, instead 

 of to that avid search for gold, the winter's tale which the 

 gaunt survivors had to tell Sir Francis Drake when he put into 

 Pimlico Sound the next summer might have been different. It 

 was a tale of famine and death, of the enmity of the Indians 

 who had not forgotten the stench of scorched corn that floated 

 over Aquascogoa; of a heartbreaking lookout for relief ships 

 that never came over the horizon. How could the Virginians 

 know that England had commandeered all ships to send them 

 against the Armada? Or that Raleigh's Ark Royal which he was 

 building for the Virginia trade had been bought off the ways 

 by the Queen for 5,000 to be the Admiral's flagship. 



Drake was hastening home with the loot of San Domingo, 

 eager to take part in the coming sea fight in home waters. 

 When he sailed, young Cavendish went with him. He had had 

 enough of planting; now he purposed to be a sailor, and as 

 close after the pattern of "El Draque" as possible. There sailed, 

 too, Thomas Hariot and John White. These took with them 

 the one harvest of that year in Virginia. It was a manuscript 

 entitled: A Brief e and True Report of the New Found Land 

 of Virginia. In its pages Hariot set down with the exactitude 

 of the mathematician a description of the land round Roanoke, 

 its plants and animals, minerals and natives, all of which John 

 White illustrated with drawings and sketches in water color. 

 Hariot gives much space to telling of the plants that were the 

 chief crops of the Virginia natives, especially tobacco and 

 "pagetour, the same in the West Indies is called maize. The 

 grains are the size of our peas, of divers colors and yield a very 



