You can see by the story, that the London Company had set for
Captain Newport a very great task when they commanded him to do
what so many people had failed in before him.
And now out of that story of the lost colony, as Master Hunt told
Nathaniel and me, grows another which also concerns us in this new
land of Virginia.
You will remember I have said that Master Ralph Lane was the governor
of the first company of people who went to Roanoke Island, and,
afterward, getting discouraged, returned to England. Now this Master
Lane, and the other men who were with him, learned from the Indians
to smoke the weed called tobacco, and carried quite a large amount
of it home with them.
Not only Sir Walter Raleigh, who knew Master Lane very well, but
many other people in England also learned to smoke, and therefore
it was that when we of Jamestown began to raise tobacco, it found
a more ready sale in London than any other thing we could send
over. Once this was known, our people gave the greater portion of
their time to cultivating the Indian weed.
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