The only destination the colonists stated is a distance and a direction: "50 miles further vp into the maine". In this record "the maine" is the mainland as against the islands and the sand banks. Lane uses it the same way when he plans to reach "the heart of the maine 200. miles at the least" (Hakluyt 1600, III, pp. 255 to 264). Figure 2 plots straight-line distances from the north end of Roanoke Island to every place the sources or the archaeology bring into play. The values are great-circle distances, the shortest distance over the earth's surface, in statute miles of 1,760 yards. The coordinates, bearings and notes on each place, and the code that computed them, are published with this report.

Figure 2. Straight-line distances from Roanoke Island. Made for this report from the coordinates of each place, as great-circle distances in statute miles; the coordinates and the code are published with it. Rings at 25, 50, 75 and 100 statute miles; the dashed ring is the colonists' "50 miles". Copper dots are places on the sand banks, dark dots are on the mainland. Four positions are approximate, as the table notes.

Place	Statute miles	Bearing	Ground	Why it matters
Dasamonquepeuc (Manns Harbor)	5	SW	mainland	Hostile town opposite Roanoke; White blamed it for the dug-up chests
Port Ferdinando, Hatarask inlet	12	SE	banks	The colony's harbour; closed inlet, position approximate
Kenricks Mounts (Rodanthe)	28	SSE	banks	Where White saw smoke on 16 August 1590 and found nobody
Croatoan, Cape Creek (Buxton), state site number 31DR1	47	SSE	banks	Manteo's town; the carved name; the Hatteras excavations
Edenton, mouth of the Chowan	51	W	mainland	Head of Albemarle Sound; the district where the first Dare Stone was said to have been found (section 7)
Salmon Creek, Sites X and Y	56	W	mainland	The First Colony Foundation's two dig sites in Bertie County, on the mainland at the head of the sound, beside the Indian town of Mettaquem (section 5); approximate
Wokokon (Ocracoke)	59	SSW	banks	Southern end of the 1585 landfall
Chowanoke, chief town of the Chowanoc	63	WNW	mainland	Lane's "130 miles"; the goal of the Jamestown search party of 1608 to 1609 (section 3); approximate
Chesepian towns, Lynnhaven Bay (the Great Neck site)	68	NNW	mainland	Lane's "130 miles"; Ralegh's intended seat; Quinn's thesis; approximate
Cashie River (Windsor)	69	W	mainland	Country of the Tuscarora, the Iroquoian-speaking people of the interior; one candidate for the Panawicke of the Jamestown reports (section 3)
Bath, Pamlico River	70	WSW	mainland	The country of the Secotan lies between
Jamestown	106	NNW	mainland	Source of every report from 1607 on
Weldon, Roanoke River fall line	111	WNW	mainland	Where Philip Barbour, the editor of the Jamestown texts, places Ocanahowan (section 3); the Hocomawananck of Edward Bland's journey of 1650 (section 4)

What an Elizabethan mile was worth

Parliament fixed the statute mile of 1,760 yards in 1593, six years after the colony sailed, and longer customary miles stayed in use. Estimates over water were guesses in any unit. Lane's own figures supply a calibration: he puts the Chesepians "distant from Roanoak about 130. miles" and Chawanook, the chief town of the Chowanoc people on the Chowan River, likewise "about 130. miles" (III, pp. 255 to 256). The straight-line distances are 68 and 63 statute miles. The routes Lane travelled, along Albemarle Sound and up the Chowan, or north through the sounds and overland, are roughly 85 to 100 miles. Lane's mile therefore runs at about two thirds of a statute mile of travel, and about half a statute mile of straight-line distance.

Three readings of the colonists' fifty miles follow, and they should be kept apart.

Reckoned as Lane reckoned, fifty miles is thirty to thirty-five statute miles of travel, which reaches the middle of Albemarle Sound and the shores of the Alligator and Scuppernong rivers on its south side.
In statute miles the ring passes through the mouth of the Chowan and the Salmon Creek shore.
In a customary mile of about 2,000 yards or more it reaches the lower Chowan, the Cashie River and the mouth of the Roanoke River.

All three readings lie inside the Albemarle basin, to the west. None of them reaches the Chesapeake, which Lane had counted at 130 miles and which lay north across the sounds rather than "vp into the maine", and none describes Croatoan, which lies south on the banks.

What the geography settles and what it leaves open

The announced move was into the Albemarle basin. Its western end, the Chowan mouth, is the part the English knew best: Lane had sailed there in 1586, had noted the Chowanoc town of Ohanoak as "a goodly high land" with "a very goodly corne field", and had found a channel "nauigable for good shipping" (III, p. 256). Sites X and Y stand at that end. Nothing in the phrase itself picks that end over the middle of the sound.
Croatoan at 47 miles is not "the maine", and White never calls it so. The carved name records a seat there in the colonists' own code. Both places are in the record, and they are compatible only as stages, or as the seats of different groups.
The Chesapeake is excluded as the announced destination by the wording, by Lane's distance and by the colonists' refusal to go there in 1587, when the pilot would not carry them further. It is not excluded as a later refuge for a party. By Lane's estimate it was four days overland from the head of the Chowan (III, p. 258).
Ocanahowan, the inland town of the Jamestown reports (section 3), where Barbour places it near the falls of the Roanoke River, is 110 miles from Roanoke Island, twice the announced distance. The Jamestown reports that put clothed men there in 1608 describe a position twenty years on, and up a river the English had entered in 1586, not the move of 1587.

Fifty miles into the main: the geography

What an Elizabethan mile was worth

What the geography settles and what it leaves open