" Small wonder that
Dale was apprehensive. "What may be the daunger of this unto us," he wrote
home, "who are here so few, so weake, and unfortified, . . . I refer me to
your owne honorable knowledg."
Months pass, and the English Ambassador to Spain writes from Madrid that he
"is not hasty to advertise anything upon bare rumours, which hath made me
hitherto forbeare to write what I had generally heard of their intents
against Virginia, but now I have been . . . advertised that without
question they will speedily attempt against our plantation there. And that
it is a thing resolved of, that ye King of Spain must run any hazard with
England rather than permit ye English to settle there . . . .Whatsoever is
attempted, I conceive will be from ye Havana."
Rumors fly back and forth. The next year 1613--the Ambassador writes from
Madrid: "They have latelie had severall Consultations about our Plantation
in Virginia. The resolution is--That it must be removed, but they thinke
it fitt to suspend the execution of it, . . . for that they are in hope
that it will fall of itselfe."
The Spanish hope seemed, at this time, not at all without foundation.
Members of the Virginia Company had formed the Somers Islands Company named
for Somers the Admiral--and had planted a small colony in Bermuda where
the Sea Adventure had been wrecked. Here were fair, fertile islands without
Indians, and without the diseases that seemed to rise, no man knew how,
from the marshes along those lower reaches of the great river James in
Virginia.
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