On other days further explorations were made around Albemarle Sound, and information more or less authentic was gathered from the natives as to Indian towns, and relations between the tribes and the several kings of the region round about. They found that beyond the islands lay the mainland. They were told of the greatest Indian city called “Scicoak,” on the “River Occam”: of another great town on a tributary of this river, under a “free lord,” independent of neighbouring kings; and another, four days’ journey southwest of Roanoke, called “Sequotan,” or “Secotan.” The friendship of the natives increased in warmth on closer intercourse with the Englishmen. Their interest in the English ships was unbounded. Whenever a gun was discharged, “were it but a hargubuz,” they would tremble “for the strangeness of the same.” Their own weapons were principally slender bows and arrows. The arrows were small canes headed with a sharp shell or a fish’s tooth, but “sufficient ynough to kill a naked man.” They used swords of hardened wood, and a sort of club with the sharp horns of a stag fastened at the heavy end. They wore wooden breastplates for defence. When they went to war they carried with them “their idol of whom they aske counsel as the Romans were woont of the Oracle of Apollo.” They sang songs as they marched forth to battle instead of sounding drums and trumpets. Their wars were “very cruel and bloody.” For this reason, and as a result of civil dissensions that had happened among them in recent years, the people of the region were “marvellously wasted, and in some places the countrey [was] left desolate.”
When the reconnoitering captains finally set sail for the return to England they carried with them two of the natives, “lustie men,” Wanchese and Manteo by name. Manteo afterward became of considerable service to the first two colonies, and rose to the distinction of a native American baron—the “Lord of Roanoak,” as will duly appear with the development of the story of colonization in the following chapters.
The country to which Queen Elizabeth gave the name “Virginia,” upon the return of Raleigh’s reconnoitering captains in September, 1584, with their flattering report, comprehended vaguely the whole of the seaboard of North America above Florida to a point toward Newfoundland, and inland indefinitely. In the following Spring Raleigh’s first company of intended colonists were ready to depart for the fruitful region, the attractions of which Captains Amadas and Barlow had set forth so enchantingly.