John White was the 16th-century version of a documentary filmmaker. Equipped with pigment and paper, he crossed the Atlantic in 1585 to record what Sir Richard Grenville's expedition found on Roanoke Island.

A year later White returned to England with pictures of paradise, enough to sell investors and citizens on the idea of a permanent settlement in America. White would be its governor.

For the next two centuries, the artist-adventurer's watercolor drawings shaped the way the English pictured the New World. They're also the only surviving visual record of the effort to establish what became known as the Lost Colony. Every settler -- including Virginia Dare, White's granddaughter and the first English child born in America -- vanished after White went back to England for supplies.

More than 70 of his drawings will form the core of a major exhibition coming to the N.C. Museum of History next month. This is only the second time the British Museum has allowed the collection to leave. The first time was in 1965, when it traveled to the National Gallery of Art, the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City and the N.C. Museum of Art in Raleigh. After the 2007-08 three-city tour, the British Museum will probably return the delicate paintings to storage for another generation, said Jeanne Marie Warzeski, a curator at the Raleigh museum.

Originally, the paintings and engravings made from them a century later were going to make up the whole exhibition. But the history museum expanded the idea to include a broad exploration of the Lost Colony with hands-on elements. A "C.S.I. Roanoke" section will present theories on what happened to the vanished colonists. Another will look at the 70-year history of the outdoor drama "The Lost Colony."

Also on display will be some of the "Dare Stones" -- large pieces of rocks that were spread from North Carolina to Georgia with Elizabethan-era words chiseled into them. They once were thought to document what happened to the colonists. Their authenticity has since been questioned, but they are considered historically significant. The stones, which belong to Brenau University in Gainesville, Ga., have never been displayed in public.

It's one more piece of history for this once-in-a-generation exhibition.