most explicit on this point. They were commanded to observe whether the river on which they were ordered to establish themselves, sprang from mountains or from a lake. If from a lake, the journey to the South Sea could be accomplished with ease and dispatch, as it was most probable that a river ran into the lake from the direction of the sea. Reference was made to the coincidence of the Volga, Tanis, and Dwina; these famous streams had their fountains near the same spot, but emptied into seas lying widely apart. In selecting a river upon which the plantation was to be placed, the colonists were instructed, in case it had two main branches, to follow the one that bent most towards the northwest, since it was by going towards this point of the compass that the other sea would be the soonest reached.[1]
The belief in England that the South Sea lay only a short distance overland from the Chesapeake Bay had, probably, been created by the reports which Ralph Lane recorded in his account of the Roanoke Colony. Lane had been informed by the Indians that from one of their villages, not far from Roanoke, it required only a journey of thirty days to arrive at the head of the Moratoc River, and that its waters there gushed out of an enormous rock situated so near to the sea that the waves of the latter very often, in heavy storms, mingled with the stream as it poured from the rock, causing it to become brackish to the taste. The hope of gazing upon this sea with his own eyes had prompted Lane to make a voyage of one hundred and sixty miles into the country by way of the river, he and his companions enduring unexampled hardships before they were forced to abandon their design. In undertaking this expedition, they had the active encouragement of Mr. Hariot, a member of the Colony, and among the most cele-
- ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, p. xxxv.
