Raleigh's Virginia soon faded, but her portrait to the life is to be
found in Hariot's book, especially when taken with the pictures by
Captain John White, so often referred to in the text. This precious
little work is perhaps the most truthful, trustworthy, fresh, and
important representation of primitive American human life, animals and
vegetables for food, natural productions and commercial commodities that
has come down to us. Though the 'first colonie' of Raleigh, like all his
subsequent efforts in this direction, was a present failure, Hariot and
White have left us some, if not ample, compensation in their picturesque
account of the savage life and lavish nature of pre-Anglo-Virginia, the
like of which we look for in vain elsewhere, either in Spanish, French,
or English colonization.

Indeed, nearly all we know of the uncontaminated American aborigines,
their mode of life and domestic economy, is derived from this book, and
therefore its influence and results as an original authority cannot well
be over-estimated. We have many Spanish and French books of a kindred
character, but none so lively and lifelike as this by Hariot, especially
as afterwards illustrated by De Bry's engravings from White's drawings
described below.

The first breath of European enterprise in the New World, combined with
its commercial Christianity, seems in all quarters, particularly the
Spanish and English, to have at once taken off the bloom and freshness
of the Indian. His natural simplicity and grandeur of character
immediately quailed before the dictatorial owner of property and
civilization. The Christian greed for gold and the civilized cruelty
practised without scruple in plundering the unregenerate and unbaptized
of their possessions of all kinds, soon taught the Indian cunning and
the necessity of resorting to all manner of savage and untutored devices