[Sir Richard Grenville in 1591 was vice-admiral of a fleet, under command of Lord Thomas Howard, at the Azores, sent against a Spanish Plate-fleet.Six English vessels were suddenly opposed by a Spanish convoy of 53 ships of war.Left behind his comrades, in embarking from an island, opposed by five galleons, he maintained a terrible fight for fifteen hours, his vessel all cut to pieces, and his men nearly all slain.He died uttering aloud these words: "Here dies Sir Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, fighting for his country, queen, religion, and honor."]
Mr.Ralph Lane's colony was splendidly fitted out, much better furnished than the one that Newport, Wingfield, and Gosnold conducted to the River James in 1607; but it needed a man at the head of it.
If the governor had possessed Smith's pluck, he would have held on till the arrival of Grenville.
Lane did not distinguish himself in the conduct of this governorship, but he nevertheless gained immortality.For he is credited with first bringing into England that valuable medicinal weeds called tobacco, which Sir Walter Raleigh made fashionable, not in its capacity to drive "rheums" out of the body, but as a soother, when burned in the bowl of a pipe and drawn through the stem in smoke, of the melancholy spirit.
The honor of introducing tobacco at this date is so large that it has been shared by three persons--Sir Francis Drake, who brought Mr.Lane home; Mr.Lane, who carried the precious result of his sojourn in America; and Sir Walter Raleigh, who commended it to the use of the ladies of Queen Elizabeth's court.
But this was by no means its first appearance in Europe.It was already known in Spain, in France, and in Italy, and no doubt had begun to make its way in the Orient.In the early part of the century the Spaniards had discovered its virtues.It is stated by John Neander, in his " Tobaco Logia," published in Leyden in 1626, that Tobaco took its name from a province in Yucatan, conquered by Fernando Cortez in 1519.The name Nicotiana he derives from D.