Buried in text and therefore often overlooked, scant clues about some of North Carolina's most storied history - from the 1500s - are getting new illumination and quite possibly a television special all their own on the History Channel.

    In decades spent searching for the Lost Colony, Eastern North Carolina researcher Fred Willard, like many others before him, has scanned and combed the writings of English historians Ralph Lane and John White looking for clues to the final whereabouts of Sir Walter Raleigh's colony.

    Willard admits to having read a passage by White but never giving it much thought until he came across a new translation of a Spanish document pertaining to the Roanoke Colonies.

    A 1589 deposition by Pedro de Arana in Havana and now part of the collection of the Archivo de Indias in Seville, Spain, carried the following inscription: "Account of ... where the English are settled on the coast of Florida at the latitude of 36 degrees 1/4."

    The document had been translated twice previously, in 1951 and 1954.

    Diaz had been taken prisoner by Sir Richard Granville, who was to resupply the Ralph Lane colony of 1585. His account offers the following:

    "The land produces little to eat. There is only maize and of that little and poor in quality.

    "And so they found the island deserted. They found an Englishman and an Indian who had been hanged. Of the natives they found only three, and as they were conducting these to their ships two escaped. The other was held prisoner, and of him they learned that Francis Drake had taken away what settlers there were in the island."

    That much of Diaz's account fits most of the common theories related to the colonies. The translation of Diaz's next line was what sparked Willard's interest, and garnered the attention of those backing his research, as well as officials at Elizabeth City State University, which has procured a $22,000 grant to purchase flight time and use of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's radar imagining jet.

    One translation states, "They have there a timber fort of not great strength, which stands in the water. There is an abundance of timber. The soil is sandy and wet and swampy."

    Diaz's account, handwritten in triplicate, is on both sides of a piece of parchment. Because ink was used in each record, reading the document is difficult, Willard said.

    In a new translation by James Lavin, a professor in the College of William and Mary's Department of Cultural History, a number of errors in the earlier documents is noted. Lavin rewrote the translation as, "on it they had a flimsy (of little strength) wooden fort and (it) is in the water (está dentro el aguq - ?está dentro del agua?) Possibly indicating a moat? Since there is no pronoun, I am presuming the person of the verb refers to the nearest noun, i.e., fort). ... and there is an abundance of wood, the soil sandy, wet and pantanosa (either marshy or swampy)."

    The idea of the colony's fort being near water of swampy areas is not a new one. Washington underwater archaeologist Gordon Watts has theorized the fort's location to be just off the north end of Roanoke Island, where two wells were found and numerous artifacts have been recovered from beneath the water.

    But armed with this new information, Willard re-examined White's writing and became intrigued by a brief description:

    "It was so exceeding darke, that we ouershot the place a quarter of a mile: there we espied towards the North end of the Iland ye light of a great fire thorow the woods, to the which we presently rowed: when wee came right ouer against it, we let fall our Grapnel neere the shore, & sounded with a trumpet a Call, & afterwardes many familiar English tunes of Songs, and called to them friendly; but we had no answere, we therefore landed at day-breake, and comming to the fire, we found the grasse & sundry rotten trees burning about the place. From hence we went thorow the woods to that part of the Iland directly ouer against Dasamongwepeuk, & from thence we returned by the water side, round about the Northpoint of the Iland, vntill we came to the place where I left our Colony in the yeere 1586."

    Several paragraphs later, White continued his report on the voyage: "From thence wee went along the water side, towards the poynt of the Creeke to see if we could find any of their botes of Pinnisse, be we could perceiue no signe of them..."

    Willard pulled out a map of Roanoke Island. "There are several swampy areas at the north end of the Island, but no creek, "he said, pointing. "Now, look here: Martha's Garden, Shallowbag Bay. This area is swampy and here" - he pointed again - "the creek. If they overshot their landing a quarter mile and could look north and see the end of the island, as White says, then that leaves only two places, Wanchese and Shallowbag Bay" as the location of the remnants of the colony.

    Willard's grant through ECSU must be used before the end of April; he hopes to have the NASA jet make two or three passes over Roanoke Island and at least two other sites where he believes the famed Lost Colony might have moved.

    He also has announced plans to participate in an hour-long special on the History Channel as part of an ongoing investigation series called "Digging for the Truth."