to enable him to cope with his relentless enemies for even restrained
liberty and self-preservation; nay, even for very existence, and this
too on his own soil that generously gave him bread and meat. All these
by a self-asserted authority the coming European civilizer, with Bible
in hand, taxed with tribute of gold, labour, liberty, life. This has
been the common lot of the western races.

It is therefore refreshing to catch this mirrored glimpse of Virginia,
her inhabitants, and her resources of primitive nature, before she was
contaminated by the residence and monopoly of the white man. It may have
been best in the long run that the European races should displace the
aborigines of the New World, but it is a melancholy reflection upon ' go
ye into all the world and preach the gospel unto every creature,' that
no tribe of American Indians has yet been absorbed into the body
politic. Many a white man has let himself down into savage life and
habits, but no tribe of aborigines has yet come up to the requirements,
the honours, and the delights of European civilization. Like the tall
wild grass before the prairie-fire, the aboriginal races are gradually
but surely being swept away by the progress of civilization. Now that
they are gone or going the desire to gather real and visible memorials
of them is increasing, but fate seems to have swept these also from the
grasp of the greedy conqueror. Cortes gathered the golden art treasures
of Montezuma and sent them to Charles the Fifth, but the spoiler was
spoiled on the high seas, and not a drinking-cup or ringer-ring of that
western barbaric monarch remains to tell us of his island splendour.

A historical word upon the events that led up to Raleigh's Virginia
patent may not be out of place in a bibliographical Life of Hariot. The
patent was no sudden freak of fortune but was the natural outgrowth of
stirring events. Had it not been allotted to Raleigh it would doubtless