The First Colony: John White

The inclusion of a list of drawings, with associated texts, may appear an unusual feature in a documentary collection, yet what follows is not primarily a catalogue of John White’s drawings, ¹ but an attempt to see what historical evidence they can be made to yield on the Virginia ventures. It is based on the assumption, which the evidence goes some considerable way to prove, that they can be grouped to provide, though naturally with many gaps, a visual commentary on the course of Grenville’s expedition through the West Indies to Raleigh’s Virginia in 1585 and on the history of the first colony maintained at Roanoke Island during the following year. The arrangement is open to the criticism that it lacks certainty in a number of places, ² but what is known about the drawings themselves, ³ what White’s composite pictures and maps tell us about the individual drawings of birds and fishes, and the extent to which they dovetail into Hariot’s analysis (fully illustrated in the previous chapter), all point the same way in the great majority of cases. If there is uncertainty when White made a particular drawing, the reader is given all the available evidence, with the exception of the drawing itself, with which to make up his own mind. All inscriptions contained on the drawings are printed, and texts are added from De Bry’s America—these are by Thomas Hariot ⁴ —and from other sources where they are available. In the notes and identifications the question whether the subjects 391were found along the route traversed by the outward and homeward expeditions or in areas visited by the colonists from Roanoke Island is constantly kept in mind. And this explains, what to some readers may seem superfluous, a certain preoccupation with the fauna and flora of North Carolina.