Thomas Hariot ————————————————————————————————————-

[Redactor's note: Very little is known of Thomas Hariot; his only published works are the 'Briefe and true report' (PG#4247) and the posthumous 'Praxis', a handbook of algebra. He anticipated the law of refraction, corresponded with Kepler, observed comets, and may have been the first to recognize that the straight line paths of comets might be segments of elongated ellipses. The lost 'ephemera' referred to in the text have since been found (since 1876) and a conference was held in 1970 at the University of Delaware on the current state of Hariot research, the proceedings of which have been published by the Oxford University Press, where one may find a fairly current view of the historical record. Due to the large number of quotations and early english typography, the casual reader may find the 'html' version easier to follow than the text version.]

————————————————————————————————————- THOMAS HARIOT THE MATHEMATICIAN THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE SCHOLAR DEVELOPED CHIEFLY FROM DORMANT MATERIALS WITH NOTICES OF HIS ASSOCIATES INCLUDING BIOGRAPHICAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DISQUISITIONS UPON THE MATERIALS OF THE HISTORY OF 'OULD VIRGINIA'

BY HENRY STEVENS OF VERMONT

————————————————————————————————————- PREMONITION

WHEN I YEARS AGO undertook among other enterprises to compile a sketch of the life of THOMAS HARIOT the first historian of the new found land of Virginia; and to trace the gradual geographical development of that country out of the unlimited 'Terra Florida' of Juan Ponce de Leon, through the French planting and the Spanish rooting out of the Huguenot colony down to the successful foothold of the English in Wingandacoa under Raleigh's patent, I little suspected either the extent of the research I was drifting into, or the success that awaited my investigations.

The results however are contained in this little volume, which has expanded day by day from the original limit of fifty to above two hundred pages. From a concise bibliographical essay the work has grown into a biography of a philosopher and man of science with extraordinary surroundings, wherein the patient reader may trace the gradual development of Virginia from the earliest time to 1585 ; I especially,' says Strachey, I that which hath bene published by that true lover of vertue and great learned professor of all arts and knowledges, Mr Hariots, who lyved there in the tyme of the first colony, spake the Indian language, searcht the country,' etc ; Hariot's nearly forty years' intimate connection with Sir Walter Raleigh; his long close companionship with Henry Percy ; his correspondence with Kepler; his participation in Raleigh's 'History of the World;' his invention of the telescope and his consequent astronomical discoveries ; his scientific disciples ; his many friendships and no foeships ; his blameless life ; his beautiful epitaph in St Christopher's church, and his long slumber in the 'garden' of the Bank of England.

The little book is now submitted with considerable diffidence, for in endeavouring to extricate Hariot from the confusion of historical 'facts' into which he had fallen, and to place him in the position to which he is entitled by his great merits, it is desirable to be clear, explicit and logical. A decision of mankind of two centuries' standing, as expressed in many dictionaries and encyclopaedias, cannot be easily reversed without good contemporary evidence. This I have endeavoured to produce.

Referring to pages 191 and 192 the writer still craves the reader's indulgence for the apparently irrelevant matter introduced, as well as for the inartistic grouping of the many detached materials, for reasons there given.

It ought perhaps to be stated here that the book necessarily includes notices, more or less elaborate, of very many of Hariot's friends, associates and contemporaries, while others, for want of space, are mentioned little more than by name.

The lives of Raleigh, and Henry Percy of Northumberland, Prisoners in the Tower, seem to be inseparable from that of their Fidus Achates, but I have endeavoured to eliminate that of Hariot as far as possible without derogation to his patrons. All the new documents mentioned have their special value, but too much importance cannot be attached to the recovery of Hariot's Will, for it at once dispels a great deal of the inference and conjecture that have so long beclouded his memory. It throws the bright electric light of to-day over his eminently scholarly, scientific and philosophical Life. By this and the other authorities given it is hoped to add a new star to the joint constellation of the honored Worthies of England and America.

HENRY STEVENS of Vermont

Vermont House, xiii Upper Avenue Road, London, N.W. April 10 1885

————————————————————————————————————- THOMAS HARIOT AND HIS ASSOCIATES

' chusing always rather to doe some thinge worth nothing than nothing att all.' Sir William Lower to Hariot July 19 1611 (see p. 99)

————————————————————————————————————- To

FRANCIS PARKMAN

THE

HISTORIAN and TRUSTIE FRIEND

Who Forty Years ago When we were young Students of History together Gave me a hand of his over the Sea NOW Give I him this right hand of mine with Ever grateful Tribute to our life-long

FRIENDSHIP

MORIN

Custos juris reimprimendi Caveat homo trium literarum

[The touching Dedication on the opposite page was penned by my father a few months before his death on February 18, 1886. I have thought it best to leave it exactly as he had planned it, although now, alas! Mr. Parkman is no longer with us. Let us hope the old friends may have again joined hands beyond the unknown sea.-H. N. S.]

————————————————————————————————————- EXPLANATORY

IN the year 1877 the late Mr. Henry Stevens of Vermont, under the pseudonym of ' Mr. Secretary Outis,' projected and initiated a literary Association entitled THE HERCULES CLUB. The following extracts from the original prospectus of that year explain this platform:

The objects of this Association are literary, social, antiquarian, festive and historical ; and its aims are thoroughly independent research into the materials of early Anglo-American history and literature. The Association is known as THE HERCULES CLUB, whose Eurystheus is Historic Truth and whose appointed labours are to clear this field for the historian of the future.

" Sinking the individual in the Association the Hercules Club proposes to scour the plain and endeavour to rid it of some of the many literary, historical, chronological, geographical and other monstrous errors, hydras and public nuisances that infest it . . . . Very many books, maps, manuscripts and other materials relating alike to England and to America are well known to exist in various public and private repositories on both sides of the Atlantic. Some unique are of the highest rarity, are of great historic value, while others are difficult of access, if not wholly inaccessible, to the general student. It s one of the purposes therefore of the Hercules Club to ferret out these materials, collate, edit and reproduce them with extreme accuracy, but not in facsimile. The printing is to be in the best style of the Chiswick Press. The paper with the Club's monogram in each leaf is made expressly for the purpose".

The following ten works were selected as the first field of the Club's investigations, and to form the first series of its publications.

1. Waymouth (Capt. George) Voyage to North Virginia in 1605. By James Rosier. London, 1605, 4

2. Sil. Jourdan's Description of Barmuda. London, 1610, 4

3. Lochinvar. Encouragements for such as shall have intention to bee Vndertakers in the new plantation of Cape Breton, now New Galloway. Edinburgh, 1625, 4

4. Voyage into New England in 1623-24.. By Christopher Levett. London, 1628, 4

5. Capt. John Smith's True Relation of such occurrences of Noate as hath hapned in Virginia. London, 1608, 4

6. Gosnold's Voyage to the North part of Virginia in 1602. By John Brereton. London, 1602, 4

7. A Plain Description of the Barmudas, now called Sommer Islands. London, 1613, 4

8. For the Colony in Virginia Brittania, Lavves Divine Morall and Martiall, &c. London, 1612, 4

9. Capt. John Smith's Description of NewEngland, 16l4-15, map. London, 1616, 4

10. Hariot (Thomas) Briefe and true report of the new foundland of Virginia. London, 1588, 4

'Mr. Secretary Outis' undertook the task of seeing the reprints of the original texts of these ten volumes through the Press, and almost the whole of this work he actually accomplished.

The co-operative objects of the Association, however, appear never to have been fully inaugurated, although a large number of literary men, collectors, societies and libraries entered their names as Members of the Club. All were willing to give their pecuniary support as subscribers to the Club's publications, but few offered the more valuable aid of their literary assistance; hence practically the whole of the editing also devolved upon Mr. Henry Stevens.

He first took up No. 10 on the above list, Hariot's Virginia. His long and diligent study for the introduction thereto, resulted in the discovery of so much new and important matter relative to Hariot and Raleigh, that it became necessary to embody it in the present separate volume, as the maximum dimensions contemplated for the introduction to each work had been exceeded tenfold or more.

Owing to Mr. Stevens's failing health, the cares of his business, and the continual discovery of fresh material, it was not till 1885 that his investigations were completed, although many sheets of the book had been printed off from time to time as he progressed. The whole of the text was actually printed off during his lifetime, but unfortunately he did not live to witness the publication of his work, perhaps the most historically important of any of his writings. Publication has since been delayed for reasons explained hereinafter.

On the death of my father, on February 28, 1886, I found myself appointed his literary executor, and I have since devoted much time to the arrangement, completion, and publication of his various unfinished works, seeking the help of competent editors where necessary.

Immediately after his decease I published his

Recollections of Mr. James Lenox of New York, and the formation of his Library, a little volume which was most favourably received and ran through several impressions.

In the same year I published The Dawn of British Trade to the East Indies as recorded in the Court Minutes of the East India Company. This volume contained an account of the formation of the Company and of Captain Waymouth's voyage to America in search of the North-west passage to the East Indies. The work was printed for the first time from the original manuscript preserved in the India Office, and the introduction was written by Sir George Birdwood.

In 1888 I issued Johann Schner, Professor of Mathematics at Nuremberg. A reproduction of his Globe of 1523 long lost, his dedicatory letter to Reymer von Streytperck, and the 'De Moluccis' of Maximilianus Transylvanus, with new translations and notes on the Globe by Henry Stevens of Vermont, edited, with an introduction and bibliography, by C. H. Coote, of the British Museum. This Globe of 1523, now generally known as Schner's Third Globe, is marked by a line representing the route of Magellan's expedition in the first circumnavigation of the earth; and the facsimile of Maximilianus's interesting account of that voyage, with an English translation, was consequently added to the volume. Mr. Coote, in his introduction, gives a graphic account of many other early globes, several of which are also reproduced in facsimile. The whole volume was most carefully prepared, and exhibits considerable originality both in the printing and binding, Mr. Henry Stevens's own ideas having been faithfully carried out.

In 1893 I issued to the subscribers that elegant folio volume which my father always considered as his magnum opus. It was entitled The New Laws of the Indies for the good treatment and preservation of the Indians, promulgated by the Emperor Charles the Fifth, 1542-1543. A facsimile reprint of the original Spanish edition, together with a literal translation into the English language, to which is prefixed an historical introduction. Of the long introduction of ninety-four pages, the first thirty-eight are from the pen of Mr. Henry Stevens, the remainder from that of Mr. Fred. W. Lucas, whose diligent researches into American history are amply exemplified in his former work, Appendiculae Historicae, or shreds of history hung on a horn, and in his recent work, The Annals of the Voyages of the Brothers Zeno.

Ever since 1886 I have from time to time unsuccessfully endeavoured to enlist the services of various editors competent to complete the projected eleven volumes of the Hercules Club publications, but after a lapse of nearly fourteen years I have awakened to the fact that no actual progress has been made, and that I have secured nothing beyond the vague promise of future assistance. The field of editors capable of this class of work being necessarily very limited, and death having recently robbed me in the most promising case of even the slender hope of future help, I determined to ascertain for myself the exact position of the work already done, with the hope of bringing at least some of the volumes to a completion separately, instead of waiting longer in the hope of finishing and issuing them all en bloc as originally proposed and intended. On collating the printed stock I found that the two volumes, Hariot's Virginia and the Life of Hariot, were practically complete, the text of both all printed off, and the titles and preliminary leaves and the Index to Hariot's Virginia actually standing in type at the Chiswick Press just as my father left them fourteen years ago! (Many thanks to Messrs Charles Whittingham and Co. for their patience.) The proofs of these I have corrected and passed for press, and I have added the Index to the present volume. My great regret is that I did not sooner discover the practical completeness of these two volumes, as owing to the nature of the contents of the Life of Hariot it is not just to Hariot's memory, or to that of my father, that such important truths should so long have been withheld from posterity.

These two volumes being thus completed, t remained to be decided in what manner they should be published. I did not feel myself competent to pick up the fallen reins of the HERCULES CLUB, which, as I have said before, appears never to have been fully inaugurated on the intended co-operative basis.

There being now no constituted association (such having entirely lapsed on the death of Mr. ' Secretary Outis'), and many of the original subscribers, who were ipso facto members, being also no longer with us, it appeared impossible to put forth the volumes as the publications of the HERCULES CLUB. Consequently I resolved to issue them myself (and any future volumes I may be able to bring to completion) simply as privately printed books, and I feel perfectly justified in so doing, as no one but Mr. Henry Stevens had any hand in their design or production either editorially or financially. No money whatever was received from the members, whose subscriptions were only to become payable when the publications were ready for delivery. The surviving members have been offered the first chance of subscribing to these two Hariot volumes and I am grateful for the support received. They and the new subscribers will also be offered the option of taking any subsequent volumes of the series which I may be enabled to complete.

HENRY N. STEVENS,

Literary Executor of the late Henry Stevens of Vermont. 39, Great Russell Street, London, W.C. 10th February, 1900.

————————————————————————————————————- THOMAS HARIOT

AND HIS

ASSOCIATES

COLLECTORS OF RARE English books always speak reverently and even mysteriously of the 'quarto Hariot' as they do of the 'first folio.' It is given to but few of them ever to touch or to see it, for not more than seven copies are at present known to exist. Even four of these are locked up in public libraries, whence they are never likely to pass into private hands.

One copy is in the Grenville Library; another is in the Bodleian; a third slumbers in the University of Leyden; a fourth is in the Lenox Library; a fifth in Lord Taunton's; a sixth in the late Henry Huth's; and a seventh produced 300 in 1883 in the Drake sale.

The little quarto volume of Hariot's Virginia is as important as it is rare, and as beautiful as it is important. Few English books of its time, 1588, surpass it either in typographic execution or literary merit. It was not probably thrown into the usual channels of commerce, as it bears the imprint of a privately-printed book, without the name or address of a publisher, and is not found entered in the registers of Stationers' Hall. It bears the arms of Sir Walter Raleigh on the reverse of the title, and is highly commended by Ralfe Lane, the late Governor of the Colony, who testifies, 'I dare boldly auouch It may very well pass with the credit of truth even amongst the most true relations of this age.' It was manifestly put forth somewhat hurriedly to counteract, in influential quarters, certain slanders and aspersions spread abroad in England by some ignorant persons returned from Virginia, who 'woulde seeme to knowe so much as no men more,' and who ' had little vnderstanding, lesse discretion, and more tongue then was needful or requisite.' Hariot's book is dated at the end, February 1588, that is 1589 by present reckoning. Raleigh's assignment is dated the 7th of March following. It is probable therefore that the 'influential quarters' above referred to meant the Assignment of Raleigh's Charter which would have expired by the limitation of six years on the 24th of March, 1590, if no colonists had been shipped or plantation attempted. It is possible also that Theodore De Bry's presence in London, as mentioned below, may have hastened the printing of the volume.

Indeed, the little book professes to be only an epitome of what might be expected, for near the end the author says, ' this is all the fruits of our labours, that I haue thought necessary to aduertise you of at present;' and, further on, ' I haue ready in a discourse by it self in maner of a Chronicle according to the course of times, and when time shall bee thought conuenicnt, shall also be published.' Hariot's 'Chronicle of Virginia ' among things long lost upon earth ! It is to be hoped that some day the historic trumpet of Fame will sound loud enough to awaken it, together with Cabot's lost bundle of maps and journals deposited with William Worthington ; Ferdinand Columbus' lost life of his father in the original Spanish; and Peter Martyr's book on the first circumnavigation of the globe by the fleet of Magalhaens, which he so fussily sent to Pope Adrian to be read and printed, also lost! Hakluyt, in his volume of 1589, dated in his preface the 19th of November, gives something of a chronicle of Virginian events, 1584-1589, with a reprint of this book. But there are reasons for believing that this is not the chronicle which Hariot refers to. As White's original drawings have recently turned up after nearly three centuries, may we not still hope to see also Hariot's Chronicle?

However, till these lost jewels are found let us appreciate what is still left to us. Hariot's 'True Report' is usually considered the first original authority in our language relating to that part of English North America now called the United States, and is indeed so full and trustworthy that almost everything of a primeval character that we know of 'Ould Virginia' may be traced back to it as to a first parent. It is an integral portion of English history, for England supplied the enterprise and the men. It is equally an integral portion of American history, for America supplied the scene and the material.

Without any preliminary flourish or subsequent reflections, the learned author simply and truthfully portrays in 1585-6 the land and the people of Virginia, the condition and commodities of the one, with the habits and character of the other, of that narrow strip of coast lying between Cape Fear and the Chesapeake, chiefly in the present State of North Carolina. This land, called by the natives Wingandacoa, was named in England in 1584 Virginia, in compliment to Queen Elizabeth. This name at first covered only a small district, but afterwards it possessed varying limits, extending at one time over North Virginia even to 45 degrees north.

Raleigh's Virginia soon faded, but her portrait to the life is to be found in Hariot's book, especially when taken with the pictures by Captain John White, so often referred to in the text. This precious little work is perhaps the most truthful, trustworthy, fresh, and important representation of primitive American human life, animals and vegetables for food, natural productions and commercial commodities that has come down to us. Though the 'first colonie' of Raleigh, like all his subsequent efforts in this direction, was a present failure, Hariot and White have left us some, if not ample, compensation in their picturesque account of the savage life and lavish nature of pre-Anglo-Virginia, the like of which we look for in vain elsewhere, either in Spanish, French, or English colonization.

Indeed, nearly all we know of the uncontaminated American aborigines, their mode of life and domestic economy, is derived from this book, and therefore its influence and results as an original authority cannot well be over-estimated. We have many Spanish and French books of a kindred character, but none so lively and lifelike as this by Hariot, especially as afterwards illustrated by De Bry's engravings from White's drawings described below.

The first breath of European enterprise in the New World, combined with its commercial Christianity, seems in all quarters, particularly the Spanish and English, to have at once taken off the bloom and freshness of the Indian. His natural simplicity and grandeur of character immediately quailed before the dictatorial owner of property and civilization. The Christian greed for gold and the civilized cruelty practised without scruple in plundering the unregenerate and unbaptized of their possessions of all kinds, soon taught the Indian cunning and the necessity of resorting to all manner of savage and untutored devices to enable him to cope with his relentless enemies for even restrained liberty and self-preservation; nay, even for very existence, and this too on his own soil that generously gave him bread and meat. All these by a self-asserted authority the coming European civilizer, with Bible in hand, taxed with tribute of gold, labour, liberty, life. This has been the common lot of the western races.

It is therefore refreshing to catch this mirrored glimpse of Virginia, her inhabitants, and her resources of primitive nature, before she was contaminated by the residence and monopoly of the white man. It may have been best in the long run that the European races should displace the aborigines of the New World, but it is a melancholy reflection upon ' go ye into all the world and preach the gospel unto every creature,' that no tribe of American Indians has yet been absorbed into the body politic. Many a white man has let himself down into savage life and habits, but no tribe of aborigines has yet come up to the requirements, the honours, and the delights of European civilization. Like the tall wild grass before the prairie-fire, the aboriginal races are gradually but surely being swept away by the progress of civilization. Now that they are gone or going the desire to gather real and visible memorials of them is increasing, but fate seems to have swept these also from the grasp of the greedy conqueror. Cortes gathered the golden art treasures of Montezuma and sent them to Charles the Fifth, but the spoiler was spoiled on the high seas, and not a drinking-cup or ringer-ring of that western barbaric monarch remains to tell us of his island splendour.

A historical word upon the events that led up to Raleigh's Virginia patent may not be out of place in a bibliographical Life of Hariot. The patent was no sudden freak of fortune but was the natural outgrowth of stirring events. Had it not been allotted to Raleigh it would doubtless soon after have fallen to some other promoter. But Raleigh was the Devonshire war-horse that first snuffed the breeze from afar. He fathered and took upon himself the burden of this newborn English enterprise of Western Planting.

Though unsuccessful himself, Raleigh lifted his country into success more than any other one man of his time. To this day he is honoured alike in the old country that gave him birth, and in the new country to which he gave new life. His energy, enterprise, and fame are now a part of England's history and pride, while his disgrace and death belong to his king. Thomas Hariot was for nearly forty years his confidential lieutenant throughout his varied career.

From his youth Raleigh had sympathized, like many intelligent Englishmen, with the Huguenot cause in France. As early as 1569, at the age of seventeen, he had been one of a hundred volunteers whom Elizabeth sent over to assist and countenance Coligni. He thus probably became better acquainted with the great but unsuccessful scheme of colonizing Florida. At all events the history of that disastrous French Huguenot colonization was first published under his auspices, and a chief survivor, Jacques Le Moyne, became attached to his service and interests. The story is in brief as follows.

Gaspar de Coligni, Admiral of France, often in our day called the French Raleigh, was a Protestant, and firm friend of England. One of his captains, Jean Ribault, of Dieppe, also a Protestant, had written an important paper on the policy of preserving peace with Protestant England. That paper, transmitted by the Admiral to England, is still preserved in the national archives. Ribault became the leader of Coligni's preliminary expedition in 1562 into Florida to seek out a suitable place, somewhere between 30 north latitude and Cape Breton, for the discomfited Huguenots to retire to and found a Protestant colony. The previous Brazilian project had already been abandoned as impracticable and unsuccessful.

Hitherto the Spanish Roman Catholic maritime doctrine had been that to see or sail by any undiscovered country gave possession. But the French Protestants, now firmly rejecting the Pope's gift, required occupation in addition to discovery to secure title. Hence Florida at that time, not being occupied by the Spanish, was considered open to the French. Ribault sailed from Havre the 18th of February 1562, taking a course across the Atlantic direct, and, as he thought, new, making his land fall on the 30th of April at 29 degrees; but Verrazano had in 1524 sailed also direct for Florida, taking a similar course, with the difference that he started from Madeira. Thence coasting northward, seeking for a harbour, touching at the river of May, and proceeding up the coast to 32 degrees, Ribault found a good harbour into which he entered on the 27th of May, and named it Port Royal. He was so well pleased with the country that, perhaps contrary to instructions, he left a colony of thirty volunteers, under Capt. Albert de la Pierria, and returned home with the news, arriving in France, after a quick voyage, on the 20th of July, 1562.

Ribault, on leaving Port Royal, intended to explore up the coast to 40, that is, to the present site of New York, but gives various reasons for not doing so, one of which was 'the declaration made vnto vs of our pilots and some others that had before been at some of those places where we purposed to sayle and have been already found by some of the king's subjects.' This little colony of Port Royal, after nearly a year of danger and privation, built a ship and put to sea, hoping to reach France. After incredible sufferings, they were relieved by an English ship, which, after putting the feeble on shore, carried the rest to England, having on board a French sailor who had come home the previous year with Ribault. These surviving colonists were all presented to Queen Elizabeth, and attracted much attention and great sympathy in England. Some found their way back to France, while others entered the English service. Thus England became acquainted with the aim, object, success, and failure of the first Florida (now South Carolina) Protestant French colony. Thomas Hacket published in London the 30th of May 1563, Ribault's 'True and last Discouerie of Florida,' purporting to be a translation from the French; but no printed French original is now known to exist.

The year of bigotry, 1563, in France having passed, a second expedition of three vessels under Rn de Laudonnire, who had been an officer under Ribault in 1562, sailed for Florida from Havre, April 22, 1564, and arrived at the river of May the 25th of June. There were men of courage and consequence in this company of adventurers, among whom was Le Moyne, the painter and mathematician. The story of the sufferings of this second colony has often been told, and need not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that it was greatly relieved in July 1565, by Captain John Hawkins on his return voyage from his second famous slave expedition to Africa and the West Indies. Hawkins, after generously relieving the French with food, general supplies, and friendly counsel, returned to Devonshire, sailing up the coast to Newfoundland, and thence home, bringing stores of gold, silver, pearls, and the usual valuable merchandize of the Indies, but the store of information respecting Florida and our Protestant friends, and especially the geography of the American coast, was worth more to England than all his vast store of merchandize.

In 1565 a third French expedition was fitted out, again under Ribault, to supply, reinforce, and support Laudonnire. After many disappointing and vexatious delays, Ribault, late in the season, put to sea, but by stress of weather was forced into Portsmouth, where he remained a fortnight. This gave England still more information respecting the French Protestant projects of southern colonization, as well as of Florida, which at that time extended very far north of its present limits. At length on the 14th of June Ribault left the hospitable shores of England with a fair north east wind to waft his seven ships, freighted with above three hundred colonists including sailors and soldiers, and taking the new ' French route' north of the Azores and south of Bermuda, entered the river of May on the 27th of August, just one month after the departure of Hawkins, and just one day before the arrival of the Spaniards at the river of St John, a few miles south.

We find no hint of any opposition in England to these French colonizing schemes, but on the contrary they were looked upon as an advantageous barrier to Spanish greed of territorial extension northward under the vicegerent's gift. There are still existing hints of English projects of western voyages at this time, about the year 1565, to the American coast. Elizabeth, however, was friendly to the Huguenots, and evinced great sympathy with their Florida colonial scheme. England's claim to Newfoundland and Labrador, through discovery by the Cabots, had been allowed to lapse chiefly from the Protestant doctrine of non-occupation. The French occupation of Canada was not disputed. There was some doubt, however, about the intermediate country between the New France of Canada and the New France of Florida, and hence we find that private plans of English occupation were hatching at this early period, but they were not encouraged. This delicate question between France and Spain was, however, soon settled by the well known course of events with which England had nothing to do but to stand aside till the contest was over, and then in due course of time, like an independent powerful neutral, step in and reap the rewards.

It is well known that Laudonnire's followers were not altogether harmonious. Some restless spirits seceded, and seizing one of the colony's ships, entered successfully in the autumn and winter of 1564-65 into piracy on the rich commerce of Spain in the West Indies. These French spoliations had been a sore point with the owners of West India commerce since the days of Verrazano, so much so that the Spanish Government had instituted a fleet of coastguards among the islands to intercept and destroy the pirates. This fleet for some time had been under the charge of an experienced, trusted, and efficient officer named Pedro Menendez de Avils. No doubt the provocation was great, and the new piracy was not to be endured. The home government of Spain had been kept informed of the Huguenot encroachments in Florida, a country which had long ago been granted to Ponce de Leon, Ayllon and others, and had been coasted by Estevan Gomez, but these encroachments had hitherto been so long winked at that the French colonists began to feel themselves to be in tolerable security.

French piracy and Calvinism, however, coming together were two provocations too much for the patriotism and piety of the zealous Roman Catholic Spanish commander in the West Indies. Besides, there was a sorrow which roused his Spanish bigotry and induced him more than ever to serve God and his king by exterminating heresy. Don Pedro, with his new honors and high hopes, had left Cadiz on the 31st of May 1564, as Captain-General of the West India, the Terra Firma, the Peruvian, and the New-Spain fleets, his son under him commanding the ships to Vera Cruz. This son on the homeward voyage in the autumn had been lost on the rocks of Bermuda. This circumstance, with the Florida pirates, the heretic French and his Spanish love of barbaric gold, fired his zeal.

The General rushed home to Spain for new powers. Early in 1565 he stood again before Philip petition in hand. Besides his present dignities he would be Adelantado of Florida. Florida in Spanish eyes extended not only to St. Mary's or the Bay of Chesapeake, but even to Newfoundland, so as to embrace the whole northern continent west of the line of demarcation. Philip had heard not only of Laudonnire and the French Huguenots the last year, but was informed of Ribault's new reinforcing expedition from Dieppe. He at once not only granted the General's request, but enlarged his powers from time to time as additional news came in of the French. Don Pedro became indeed a royal favourite. He was now a veteran of forty-seven, who had done Philip and his father personal service. He had cruised against blockaders and corsairs in early youth, had convoyed richly-laden plate fleets from the Indies; had turned the scale of victory at StQuintin in 1557 by suddenly throwing Spanish troops into Flanders greatly to the advantage of Philip; was the commanding general of the armada in which the king returned in 1559 from Flanders to Spain; had been made in 1560 captain-general of the convoy or protecting fleets between Spain and the West Indies, in which there was much active business in guarding Spanish commerce from corsairs. In spoiling these spoilers the general amassed much wealth, and was acknowledged the protector of the islands and their commerce. In 1561 he had fallen into some difficulty which caused his arrest by the Council of the Indies, but the king came to his rescue, restored his appointments, and promoted him in 1562 and 1563, and still more, as we have seen, in 1564. In 1565 Philip gave him almost unlimited power over Florida, with directions to conquer, colonize, Christianize, explore and survey, and all these too at his own expense. Such is the fascination of royal grants. He was given three years to perform these wonders, in which so many others had failed. He was to survey the coasts up to Chesapeake Bay, explore inlets and find out the hidden straits to Cathay. Thus armed and instructed this Spanish pioneer of Virginia history and geography returned to his native Asturias, raised an army, manned and fitted out a fleet with many soldiers and sailors, and 500 negro slaves. He embarked at Cadiz with eleven ships on the 29th of June 1565, a fortnight after Ribault with his seven ships had left Portsmouth. From Porto Rico the Adelantado, in his hot haste to forestall the French, took a new route north of StDomingo, through the Lucayan islands and the Bahamas, to the coast of Florida at the River of StJohn, on the 28th of August, the day after the arrival of the French a few miles north. Here Menendez entered the inlet, landed his five hundred African negro slaves, founded a town, the first in what is now the United States, and named it StAugustine, because he made his land-fall on the saint's-day of the great African bishop. Thus StAugustine became the patron saint of this first town in the United States. Here slavery struck root, and here the Spanish Papist and the French Huguenot, brought out of civilized and Christianized Europe were set down blindfolded on the wild and inhospitable shores of Florida, like two game-cocks, to fight out their religious and implacable hatred. It was here that these 'children of the sun' showed the red men of the American forests that they too were human and mortal. Here, a few days later, the Spaniards began that merciless cut-throat religious butchery of Huguenots, to the astonishment of the savages of the primeval forests of America which finds a parallel on the pages of history only in the lesson which it taught in refined Paris just seven years later on StBartholomew's day.

All the world knows how the swift vengeance of Pedro Menendez de Aviles descended upon the unfortunate colonists of Laudonnire and Ribault and destroyed them, with very few exceptions, in September 1565. On the other hand, every one has heard how the Spaniards, almost all except the absent leader, expiated their murderous cruelty in April 1568, under the retributive justice of De Gourgues. The Spanish settlers of Florida were thus as completely exterminated by the French as the French three years before had been exterminated by the Spaniards.

After this till 1574, the Spaniards maintained possession of Florida, as far north as the Chesapeake Bay, under Menendez, who had been appointed at first Adelantado of Florida, and subsequently also Governor of Cuba. He caused an elaborate and official survey of the whole coast to be made and recorded, both in writing and in charts. Barcia tells the whole interesting story, but the charts seem to have been lost, though the description, or parts of it, remains. Menendez returned to Spain and died in 1574, just as he had been invested with the command of an 'invincible' armada of three hundred ships, and twenty thousand men to act against England and Flanders. All his North American acquisitions and surveys seem to have at once fallen into neglect. Not a Spanish town had been founded north of StAugustine. His Spanish missionaries sent among the Indians had gained no solid foot hold. Spain however still claimed possession, on paper, of the whole coast up to Newfoundland, though she could not boast of a single place of actual occupation.

England at this time began to see the coast clear for the spread of her protestant principles in America, and for her occupation of some of those vast countries she now professed to have been the first to discover by the Cabots. No friendly power any longer stood in her way. Her relations with Spain had settled into patriotic hatred and open war. The voyages of Hawkins and Drake into the West Indies had revealed to Englishmen the enormous wealth of the Spanish trade thither, as well as the weakness of the Spanish Government in those plundered papal possessions. Frobisher had matured his plans, secured his grant, and in 1576 made his first voyage to find the north west passage. The same year the half-brother of Raleigh, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, published his 'discourse for a discouerieof a new passage to Catai,' with a map showing the coast of North America, and the passage to China. This was the result of years of study, and though the elaborate work was written out hastily at last, we know that while others were advocating the north east passage, Sir Humphrey always persisted in the north western. Frobisher's expedition is said to have been an outgrowth of Gilbert's efforts and petitions. These projects were long in hand, but Gilbert, in June 1578, obtained his famous patent from Elizabeth for two hundred leagues of any American coast not occupied by a Christian prince. This grant was limited to six years, to expire the eleventh of June 1584 in case no settlement was made or colony founded. The story of Gilbert's efforts, expenditures of himself and friends, his unparalleled misfortunes and death, need not be retold here. Part of his rights and privileges fell to his half-brother Walter Raleigh who had participated somewhat in the enterprise. After Gilbert's death and before the expiration of the patent, Raleigh succeeded in obtaining from Elizabeth another patent, with similar rights, privileges, and limitations, dated the 25th of March 1584, leaving the whole unoccupied coast open to his selection. On the 27th of April, only a month later, he despatched two barks under the command of Captains Amadas and Barlow, to reconnoitre the coast, as Ribault had done, for a suitable place to plant a colony, somewhere between Florida and Newfoundland. This patent also, like Gilbert's, in case of negligence or non-success, was limited to six years. But it required the confirmation of Parliament. Though there were many rival interests, some of which had perhaps to be conciliated, the patent was confirmed.

It ought perhaps to be mentioned here that five of Gilbert's six years having already expired without his obtaining success or possession, several others, anticipating a forfeiture of the patent, began agitation for rival patents in 1583. Carleil, Walsingham, Sidney, Peckham, Raleigh, and perhaps others were eager in the strife. Mostof the papers are given in Hakluyt's 1589 edition. The ' Golden Hinde ' returned in September 1583 with the news of the utter failure of the expedition and the death of Sir Humphrey. Raleigh succeeded in obtaining the royal grant, and then all the rest joined him in getting the patent confirmed by Parliament.

Raleigh was now thirty-three, a man of position, of large heart and large income, a popular courtier high in royal favor, a man of foreign travel, great experience and extensive acquirements. He had served under Coligni with his protestant friends in France; subsequently served under William of Orange in Flanders; had served his Queen in Ireland; under Gilbert's patent, contemplated a voyage to Newfoundland in 1578; and in 1583 was ready to embark himself again, but by some happy accident did not go, though he fitted out and sent a large ship at his own cost bearing his own name, which ship however put back on account of the outbreak of some contagion. Fully alive to the wants, plans, and desires of the Huguenots, he had not only informed himself of their Florida schemes, but had promoted the publication of their history, and secured the interest and active co-operation of the most important survivor of them all, Jaques LeMoyne, the painter, who having escaped landed destitute in Wales, and subsequently entered the service of Raleigh who had him safely lodged in the Blackfriars. He had also, how or when precisely is not known, secured the active aid and facile pen of the geographical Richard Hakluyt, who wrote for him, as no man else could write, in 1584, a treatise on Western Planting, a work intended probably to prime the ministry and the Parliament, to enable Raleigh first to secure the confirmation of his patent, and afterwards the co-operation and active interest of the nobility and gentry in his enterprise. This important hitherto unpublished volume of sixty-three large folio pages in the hand writing of Hakluyt, after having probably served its purpose and lain dormant for nearly three centuries, was bought at Earl Mountnorris's sale at Arley Castle in December 1852, by Mr Henry Stevens of Vermont, who, as he himself informs us, after partly copying it, and endeavouring in vain to place it in some public or private library in England or the United States, threw it into auction, where it was sold by Messrs Puttick and Simpson in May 1854, for 44, as lot 474, Sir Thomas Phillipps being the purchaser. The manuscript still adorns the Phillipps library at Cheltenham. In 1868 a copy of this most suggestive volume was obtained by the late Dr Leonard Woods for the Maine Historical Society, and has since been edited with valuable notes by Mr Charles Deane of Cambridge and with an Introduction by Dr Woods. It appeared in 1877 as the second volume of the second series of the Society's Collections.

This Treatise of Hakluyt under Raleigh's inspiration may be regarded as the harbinger of Virginia history. Though intended for a special purpose, it is of the highest importance in developing the history of English maritime policy at that time, and defining the growth of the English arguments, advantages and reasons for western planting. The book is full of personal hints, and is immensely suggestive, showing us more than anything else the master hand of Master Hakluyt in moulding England's 'sea policie' and colonial navigation. No mere geographical study by Hakluyt could alone have produced this remarkable volume. It is the combination of many materials, and the result of compromising divers interests. Hakluyt had already, though still a young man under thirty, entered deeply into the study of commercial geography, and had in 1582 published his Divers Voyages dedicated to his friend Sir Philip Sidney, son-in-law to the chief Secretary Walsingham. In the Spring of 1583 the Secretary sent Hakluyt down to Bristol with a letter to the principal merchants there to enlist their co-operation in a project of discovery and planting in America somewhere between the possessions of the French in Canada and the Spaniards in Florida, which his son-in-law Master Christopher Carleil was developing under the auspices of the Muscovie Company, and for which they were about to ask the Queen for a patent independent of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's.

In the summer of 1583 Hakluyt thought to go to Newfoundland with Gilbert's expedition, according to the letter of Parmenius, but fortunately did not go. But in the autumn of the same year Walsingham sent him to Paris nominally as chaplain to the English Ambassador at the French court, Sir Edward Stafford, but really to pursue his geographical investigations into the west and learn what the French and Spanish were doing in these remote regions, and what were their particular claims, resources and trade.

Before his departure for Paris, the 'Golden Hinde' had returned to Falmouth with the heavy news of the fate of Gilbert and the consequent certain forfeiture of his patent, notwithstanding it had still some nine months to run. Though Sir Humphrey had taken formal possession of Newfoundland, as no colony was left there, his rights and privileges would lapse as a matter of course.

Western planting now became the talk and fashion. Many projects were hatching for new patents. Raleigh alone succeeded. Hakluyt's position and circumstances in Paris seem made for the occasion, and he soon found all these western eggs put into his basket. The materials of the several previous writers and of the rival claimants were all apparently thrust upon him. He thus became in 1583-4, though perhaps unconsciously, the mouthpiece of a snug family party all playing into the hands of Raleigh. There were Walsingham, and Sidney, and Carleil, and Leicester, all connected with each other and with Raleigh. Then there were the papers of Sir George Peckham, Edward Hayes, Richard Clarke master of the Delight, and Steven Par-menius, rich alike in hints and facts. The interests of these distinguished persons were by family ties or other influence suddenly merged into a single patent and that Raleigh's. The papers mostly passed through Raleigh's hands into Hakluyt's, who acknowledges himself indebted to him for his chiefest light.

Raleigh, besides being the half-brother and representative of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, held also a large share in that venture. Gilbert's real aim, policy and plan, in this last yearof his patent, to prospect for a suitable place in which to take possession and found a colony, was to begin at the south and work northward as the French had done, but his previous failures since 1578, the inevitable impediments and delays, the advanced season of this his last year 1583, and the necessity of making a final strike for success, in behalf of himself and his assignees, compelled him at the last hour to go direct to Newfoundland, take possession, and then, if thought best, work southward. He was however unquestionably influenced or professed to be by rumours of metals or gold mines in Newfoundland. This northern passage was his fatal mistake. Had he taken a middle or southern course say between 37 and 42 he might perhaps have succeeded.

Under these circumstances Hakluyt's Discourse of Western Planting was written, and may be considered as a digest of many plans without much originality and a consolidation of many interests. Hakluyt and Raleigh were at Oxford together, but we find no particular evidence of their intimacy before the Spring of 1584, when Hakluyt had returned to London from Paris with his Discourse, or perhaps it was partly written in England. It is pretty certain that it was not shown to the Queen before the date of the Patent, the 25th of March, as Hakluyt speaks of her seeing it in the summer. It was probably intended principally for the promotion of the interests of the Patent in Parliament.

At all events with his investigations in France Hakluyt's Discourse became thoroughly English in its tone and tenor, and from this time he labored zealously in the interests of Raleigh. A main point of inquiry in Paris was to avail himself of the many opportunities at the Spanish and Portuguese embassies, and with the French merchants and sailors of Paris, Rouen, Havre and Dieppe, to pick up the particulars of the West India trade of the Spaniards, and the nature of the French dealings in Cape Breton and Canada. This led him to set forth the advantages of direct English western trade independent of France and Spain, and of French and Spanish routes.

The fisheries of Newfoundland and the Banks were extensive, and by repeated treaties neutral, but gave no exclusive rights on the adjoining territory to any one of the fishing nations; though in all cases the English by common consent exercised leadership in the Newfoundland harbors among the fishing ships, of which there were now some six or eight hundred a year, notwithstanding the English still fished also at Iceland.

It was necessary however in the interests of England for Hakluyt in this Discourse to revive and substantiate the English rights in America by putting forward the prior discovery by the Cabots in 1497-1498. Though he presents this direct claim modestly, yet like Sir Humphrey Gilbert he founds it upon insufficient evidence. In a loose manner he speaks of Cabot and not the Cabots, and attributes to Sebastian the son what properly belongs to John the father. He reposes full confidence in the loose and gossiping statements of Peter Martyr that Sebastian Cabot, a quarter of a century after the discovery, told him that at the time, 1497 or 98,he had explored the coast to the latitude of Gibraltar, that is to Chesapeake Bay and the longitude of Cuba or the city of Cincinnati, a thing not probable, in as much as the active old pilot mayor was never able to declare, down to the time of Gomez, that he had been on that coast before. It would have been foolish in him to fit out in 1524 Gomez to ' discover ' what the pilot mayor had already explored in 1497.

Hakluyt's arguments and historical statements in this Discourse of 1584 to the present time have always been presented by English diplomatists with confidence, especially against the French. Yet the French continued to maintain their occupation of Cape Breton, the Gulf of St Lawrence and Canada, which together they called New France. It is now however made apparent from contemporary historical documents that have recently been brought to light from the archives of Spain and Venice that John Cabot, accompanied by his son Sebastian, then a youth of some nineteen or twenty years, in 1497 took possession of Cape Breton in the names of Venice and England conjointly, and raised the flags of St Mark and St George. There is not yet any trustworthy evidence that they went south of Cape Breton either in that or the voyage of 1498.

Hakluyt in his Divers Voyages in 1582 did not venture to make this Cabot claim so strong as in this Discourse. In his dedication to Sir Philip Sidney he quaintly says that he ' put downe the title which we haue to this part of America which is from Florida to 67 degrees northwarde by the letters patentes graunted to John Cabote and his three sonnes,' simply meaning that he had printed the first patent of 5th May 1496. In his title page he speaks of the Discoverie of America,' made first of all by our Englishmen and afterwards by the Frenchmen and Bretons.' He does not question the rights and privileges of Frenchmen to the Gulf of St Lawrence and Canada, because they were in the occupation of a Christian prince.

This Discourse of Western Planting therefore, and the voyage of Amadas and Barlow, in 1584, at the instigation and expense of Raleigh, based on a thorough knowledge of the Huguenot and Spanish expeditions to Florida in 1562-1568, are all parts of Virginia history, and therefore are preliminary to Hariot's Report. It should be borne in mind that these terms Florida and Virginia as used by the Spaniards, French, and English, included the whole country from the point of Florida through the Carolinas and Virginia to the Chesapeake Bay, or perhaps even to Bacalaos.

Raleigh's patent, in which all interests were thus consolidated, came before Parliament in the Autumn of 1584 well fortified in its historical and geographical bearings by Hakluyt's learned Discourse. In the House of Commons the matter was adroitly referred to a Commitee of which Walsingham and Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Christopher Hatton and Sir Francis Drake were members. The bill having passed the House was sent up to the Lords, and there read the first time on Sunday the 19th of December 1584, as appears by the following entry in the Lords' Journal, volume ii, page 76. ' Hodie allatae sicut a Dome Communi 4 Billae; Prima, For the Confirmation of the Queen's Majesty's Letters Patents, granted to Walter Raughlieghe, Esquire, touching the Discovery and Inhabiting of certain Foreign Lands and Countries, quae ia vice lecta est.' It does not appear precisely at what date the Bill received the Queen's signature, but probably as early as Christmas or New Year.

Having now early in 1585 secured the Confirmation of this much coveted patent which liberally permitted him in the name and under the aegis of England to plant a ' colonie' and found an English empire in the New World at his own expense of money, men, and enterprise; having pocketed the geographical results and valuable experience of the French in Florida and Canada; having vainly attempted a visit to Newfoundland in 1578, and having succeeded to the rights and privileges of his noble half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert; having received by the return in September of his two reconnoitring barks favorable reports as to the properest place to begin his Western Planting in Wingandacoa ; and being thoroughly supported by the good wishes and hearty co-operation of the Queen and many of her prominent and influential subjects, Raleigh rose superior to all jealousies and opposition.

This lasted as usual just so long as he was successful and no longer. But he was blessed in his household, or at his table, or in his confidence, with four sterling adherents who stuck to him through thick and thin, through prosperity and adversity. These were Richard Hakluyt, Jaques Le Moyne, John White and Thomas Hariot. When Wingandacoa makes up her jewels she will not forget these Four, whom it is just to call Raleigh's Magi.

With marvellous energy, enterprise, and skill Raleigh collected and fitted out in an incredibly short time a fleet of seven ships well stocked and well manned to transport his ' first colonie ' into the wilds of America. It was under the command of his valiant cousin, Admiral Sir Richard Grenville, and sailed from Plymouth on the 19th of May 1585. Never before did a finer fleet leave the shores of England, and never since was one more honestly or hopefully dispatched. There were the ' Tyger' and the ' Roe Buck' of 140 tons each, the ' Lyon' of 100 tons, the 'Elizabeth' of 50 tons, the ' Dorothea," a small bark, and two pinnaces, hardly big enough to bear distinct names, yet small enough to cross dangerous bars and enter unknown bays and rivers. In this splendid outfit were nearly two hundred souls, among whom were Master Ralfe Lane as governor of the colony. Thomas Candish or Cavendish afterwards the circumnavigator, Captain Philip Amadas of the Council, John White the painter as delineator and draughtsman, Master Thomas Hariot the mathematician as historiographer, surveyor and scientific discoverer or explorer, and many others whose names are preserved in Hakluyt.

The fleet had a prosperous voyage by the then usual route of the West Indies and fell in with the main of Florida on the 20th of June, made and named Cape Fear on the 23d, and a first landing the next day, and on the 26th came to Wococa where Amadas and Barlow had been the year before. They disembarked and at first mistook the country for Paradise. July was spent in surveying and exploring the country, making the acquaintance of the natives, chiefly by means of two Indians that had been taken to England and brought back able to speak English. On the 5th of August Master John Arundel, captain of one of the vessels, was sent back to England, and on the 25th of August Admiral Grenville, after a sojourn of two months in Virginia, took his leave and returned, arriving at Plymouth on the 18th of October. There were left in Virginia as Raleigh's 'First Colonie,' one hundred and nine men. They remained there one whole year and then, discontented, returned to England in July 1586 in Sir Francis Drake's fleet coming home victorious from the West Indies.

One of these 109 men was Thomas Hariot the Author of the Report of Virginia. Another was John White the painter. To these two earnest and true men we owe, as has been said, nearly all we know of 'Ould Virginia.' Their story is briefly told by Hakluyt.

Sir Francis Drake in the true spirit of friendship went out of his way to make this call on the Colony of his friend Raleigh. He found them anything but contented and prosperous. They had long been expecting supplies and reinforcements from home, which not arriving, on the departure of Drake's fleet becoming dejected and homesick, they petitioned the Governor for permission to return. Immediately after their departure a ship arrived from Raleigh, and fourteen days later Sir Richard Grenville himself returned with his fleet of three ships, new planters and stores of supplies, only to find the Colony deserted and no tidings to be had. Leaving twenty men to hold possession the Admiral made his way back to England.

It has already been stated how and under what circumstances the epitome of the labours and surveys of Hariot came to be printed, but it may be well to show how it came to be united with John White's drawings and republished a year or two later as the first part of De Bry's celebrated collections of voyages. Hakluyt returned to Paris at the end of 1584. and remained there, perhaps with an occasional visit to London, till 1588, always working in the interests of Raleigh. In April 1585, a month before the departure of the Virginia fleet, he wrote to Walsingham that he ' was careful to advertise Sir Walter Raleigh from tyme to tyme and send him discourses both in print and in written hand concerning his voyage.' Rene Goulaine de Laudonnire's Journal had fallen into Hakluyt's hand, and he induced his friend Basanier the mathematician to edit and publish it. This was done and the work was dedicated to Raleigh and probably paid for by him. Le Moyne the painter and mathematician who had accompanied the expedition, one of the few who escaped into the woods and swamps with Laudonnire the dreadful morning of the massacre, was named by Basanier. He also mentions a lad named De Bry who was lucky enough to find his way out of the clutches of the Spanish butchers into the hands of the more merciful American Savages. This young man was found by De Gourgues nearly three years later among the Indians that joined him in his mission of retribution against the Spaniards, and was restored to his friends well instructed in the ways, manners and customs of the Florida Aborigines.

This journal of Laudonnire carefully edited by Basanier was completed in time to be published in Paris in 1586, in French, in octavo. It was dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh. Hakluyt translated it into English, and printed it in small quarto in London the next year and it reappeared again in his folio voyages of 1589. The French edition fell under the eye of Theodore De Bry the afterwards celebrated engraver of Frankfort, formerly of Liege. Whether or not this engraver was a relative of young De Bry of Florida is not known, but we are told that he soon sought out Le Moyne whom he found in Raleigh's service living in the Blackfriars in London, acting as painter, engraver on wood, a teacher and art publisher or bookseller.

De Bry first came to London in 1587 to see Le Moyne and arrange with him about illustrating Laudonnire's Journal with the artist's maps and paintings, and remained here some time, but did not succeed in obtaining what he wanted, probably because Le Moyne was meditating a similar work of his own, and being still attached to the household of Raleigh was not free to negotiate for that peculiar local and special information which he had already placed at Raleigh's disposal for his colony planted a little north of the French settlement in Florida, then supposed to be in successful operation, but of which nothing had yet been published to give either the world at large or the Spaniards in the peninsula a premature clue to his enterprise.

There is still preserved a good memorial of De Bry's visit to London in the celebrated funeral pageant at the obsequies of Sir Philip Sidney in the month of February 1587, drawn and invented by T. Lant and engraved on copper by Theodore de Bry in the city of London, 1587. A complete copy is in the British Museum, and another is said to be at the old family seat of the Sidneys at Penshurst in Kent, now Lord de L'lsle's; while a third copy not quite perfect adorns the famous London collectionof Mr Gardner of St John's Wood Park.

LeMoyne died in 1588, and De Bry soon after came to London a second time and succeeded in purchasing of the widow of Le Moyne a portion of the artist's drawings or paintings together with his version of the French Florida Expeditions. While here this time De Bry fell in with Richard Hakluyt, who had returned from Paris in November 1588, escorting Lady Sheffield.

Hakluyt at the end of this year, or the beginning of 1589, was engaged in seeing through the press his first folio collection of the voyages of the English, finished, according to the date in the preface, the 17th of November, though entered at Stationers' Hall on the strength of a note from Walsingham the first of September previous. Hakluyt with his mind full of voyages and travels was abundantly competent to appreciate De Bry's project of publishing a luxurious edition of Laudonnire's Florida illustrated with the exquisite drawings of Le Moyne. Ever ready to make a good thing better, Hakluyt suggested the addition of Le Moyne's and other Florida papers; and introduced De Bry to John White, Governor of Virginia, then in London.

White, an English painter of eminence and merit, was as an artist to Virginia what Le Moyne his master had been to Florida. Le Moyne had twenty years before mapped and pictured everything in Florida from the River of May to Cape Fear, and White had done the same for Raleigh's Colony in Virginia (now North Carolina) from Cape Fear to the Chesapeake Bay. Le Moyne had spent a year with Laudonnire at Fort Caroline in 1564-65, and White had been a whole year in and about Roanoke and the wilderness of Virginia in 1585-86 as the right hand man of Hariot.

Together Hariot and White surveyed, mapped, pictured and described the country, the Indians, men and women; the animals, birds, fishes, trees, plants, fruits and vegetables. Hariot's Report or epitome of his Chronicle, reproduced by the Hercules Club, was privately printed in February 1589. A volume containing seventy-six of White's original drawings in water colours is now preserved in the Grenville library in the British Museum, purchased by the Trustees in March 1866 of Mr Henry Stevens at the instigation of Mr Panizzi, and placed there as an appropriate pendant to the world-renowned Grenville De Bry. This is the very volume that White painted for Raleigh, and which served De Bry for his Virginia. Only 23 out of the 76 drawings were engraved, the rest never yet having been published. Thus Hariot's text and map with White's drawings are necessary complements to each other and should be mentioned together.

Knowing all these men and taking an active part in all these important events, Hakluyt acted wisely in inducing De Bry to modify his plan of a separate publication and make a Collection of illustrated Voyages. He suggested first that the separate work of Florida should be suspended, and enlarged with Le Moyne's papers, outside of Laudonnire. Then reprint, as a basis of the Collection, Hariot's privately printed Report on Virginia just coming out in February 1589, and illustrate it with the map and White's drawings. Hakluyt engaged to write descriptions of the plates, and his geographical touches are easily recognizable in the maps of both Virginia and Florida.

In this way De Bry was induced to make Hariot's Virginia the First Part of his celebrated PEREGRINATIONS, with a dedication to Sir Walter Raleigh. Florida then became the Second Part. The first was illustrated from the portfolio of John White, and the second from that of Jaques Le Moyne. Both parts are therefore perfectly authentic and trustworthy. Thus the famous Collections of De Bry may be said to be of English origin, for to Raleigh and his magi De Bry owed everything in the start of his great work. Being thus supplied and instructed, De Bry returned to Frankfort, and with incredible energy and enterprise, engraved, printed, and issued his VIRGINIA in four languages, English, French, Latin and German, in 1590, and his Florida in Latin and German, in 1591. The bibliographical history of these books, the intimacy and dependence of the several persons engaged; and the geographical development of Florida-Virginia are all so intertwined and blended, that the whole seems to lead up to Thomas Hariot, the clearing up of whose biography thus becomes an appropriate labor of the Hercules Club.

Little more remains to be said of Raleigh's Magi who have been thus shown to be hand and glove in working out these interesting episodes of French and English colonial history. To Hakluyt, Le Moyne, White, De Bry and Hariot, Raleigh owes an undivided and indivisible debt of gratitude for the prominent niche which he achieved in the world's history, especially in that of England and America ; while to Raleigh's liberal heart and boundless enterprise must be ascribed a generous share of the reputation achieved by his Magi in both hemispheres.

Of Hakluyt and De Bry little more need be said here. They both hewed out their own fortunes and recorded them on the pages of history, the one with his pen, the other with his graver. If at times ill informed bibliographers who have got beyond their depth fail to discern its merits, and endeavour to deny or depreciate De Bry's Collection, charging it with a want of authenticity and historic truth, it is hoped that enough has been said here to vindicate at least the first two parts, Virginia and Florida. The remaining parts, it is believed, can be shown to be of equal authority.

Whoever compares the original drawings of Le Moyne and White with the engravings of De Bry, as one may now do in the British Museum, must be convinced that, beautiful as De Bry's work is, it seems tame in the presence of the original water-colour drawings. There is no exaggeration in the engravings.

Le Moyne's name has not found its way into modern dictionaries of art or biography, but he was manifestly an artist of great merit and a man of good position. In addition to what is given above it may be added that a considerable number of his works is still in existence, and it is hoped will hereafter be duly appreciated. In the print-room of the British Museum are two of his drawings, highly finished in water-colours, being unquestionably the originals of plates eight and forty-one of De Bry's Florida. They are about double the size of the engravings. They came in with the Sloane Collection. There is also in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum a volume of original drawings relating chiefly to Florida and Virginia (Sloane N 5270) manifestly a mixture of Le Moyne's and White's sketches. They are very valuable. There is also in the Museum library a printed and manuscript book by Le Moyne, which speaks for itself and tells its own interesting story. It is in small oblong quarto and is entitled ' La/ Clef des Champs,/ pour trouuer plusieurs Ani-/maux, tant Bestes qu'Oyseaux, auec/ plusieurs Fleurs & Fruitz. . . / Anno. I586./ Imprim aux Blackfriers, pour Jaques/ le Moyne, dit de Morgues Paintre/'. The book consists of fifty leaves, of which two are preliminary containing the title and on the reverse and third page a neat dedication in French ' A Ma-dame Madame/ De Sidney.'/ Signed' Voftre tres-affectionne,/ JAQVES LE MOINE dit

de/ MORGVES Paintre.'/ This dedication is dated ' Londres/ ce xxvi. de Mars.'/ On the reverse of the second leaf, also in French, is ' A Elle Mesme,/ Sonet' with the initials I.L.M.

Then follow forty-eight leaves with two woodcuts coloured by hand on the recto of each leaf, reverse blank. These ninety-six cuts sum up twenty-four each of beasts, birds, fruits and flowers, with names printed under each in English, French, German and Latin. Although the book is dated the 26th of March 1586, it was not entered at Stationers' Hall until the 31st of July 1587. It there stands under the name of James Le Moyne alias Morgan. Madame Sidney is given as Mary Sidney. She was sister of Sir Philip, countess of Pembroke, ' Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.' There is no allusion to Sir Philip in the dedication, and therefore we may infer that it was penned before the battle of Zut-phen. Both the dedication and the sonnet show the artist's intimacy and friendship with that distinguished family.

There are two copies of this exceedingly rare book in the British Museum, both slightly imperfect, but will together make a complete one, but the more interesting copy is that in 727 c/2 31, in the Sloane Collection. It has bound up with it thirty-seven leaves on which are beautifully drawn and painted flowers, fruits, birds &c. There can be little doubt that these are Le Moyne's own paintings. It is curious to find that all these scattered works in the different departments came in with the Sloane Collection which formed the nucleus of the British Museum. It is to be hoped that other samples of Le Moyne's art may be found or identified, and that all of them may be brought together or be described as the ' Le Moyne Collection.' How Sir Hans Sloane became possessed of them does not yet appear.

Capt. John White's name in the annals of English art is destined to rank high, though it has hitherto failed to be recorded in the art histories and dictionaries. Yet his seventy-six original paintings in water-colours done probably in Virginia in 1585-1586 while he was there with Hariot as the official draughtsman or painter of Raleigh's ' First Colonie' entitle him to prominence among English artists in Elizabeth's reign. There are some other works of his in the Manuscript department mingled with those of his friend and master Le Moyne.

As Raleigh's friend and agent White's name deserves honorable mention in the history of 'Ould Virginia.' He was an original adventurer in the ' First Colonie' and was one of the hundred and nine who spent a whole year at and about Roanoke and returned with Drake in 1586. He went again to Virginia in April 1587 as Governor of Raleigh's' Second Colonie,' consisting of one hundred and fifty persons in three ships, being the fourth expedition. Raleigh appointed to him twelve assistants 'to whome he gave a Charter, and incorporated them by the name of Governour and Assistants of the Citie of Raleigh in Virginia,' intended to be founded on the Chesapeake Bay. It never became more than a ' paper city.'

This Second Colony landed at Roanoke the 20th of July, but finding themselves disappointed and defeated in all points, the colonists joined in urging the Governor to return to England for supplies and instructions. He reluctantly departed the 27th of August from Roanoke, leaving there his daughter, who was the mother of the first child of English parents born in English North America, Virginia Dare. He intended immediately to return to Virginia with relief, but the embarrassments of Raleigh, the stirring times, and the ' Spanish Armada' defeated Sir Walter and frustrated all his plans.

On the 20th of November 1587 Governor White having reached home apprised Raleigh of the circumstances and requirements of the Colony. Sir Walter at once ' appointed a pinnesse to be sent thither with all such necessaries as he vnderstood they stood in neede of,' and also 'wrote his letters vnto them, wherein among other matters he comforted them with promise, that with all conuenient speede he would prepare a good supply of shipping and men with sufficience of all thinges needefull, which he intended, God willing, should be with them the Sommer following.' This promised fleet was got ready in the harbor of Bideford under the personal care and supervision of Sir Richard Grenville, and waited only for a fair wind to put to sea. Then came news of the proposed invasion of England by Philip King of Spain with his ' invincible armada,' so wide spread and alarming that it was deemed prudent by the Government to stay all ships fit for war in any ports of England to be in readiness for service at home ; and even Sir Richard Grenville was commanded not to leave Cornwall.

Governor White however having left about one hundred and twenty men, women and children in Virginia, among whom were his own daughter and granddaughter, left no stone unturned for their relief. He labored so earnestly and successfully that he obtained two small 'pinneses ' named the ' Brave' and the ' Roe,' one of thirty and the other of twenty-five tons, 'wherein fifteen planters and all their provision, with certain reliefe for those that wintered in the Countrie was to be transported.'

The' Brave' and the ' Roe' with this slender equipment passed the bar of Bideford the 22nd of April, just six months after the return of the Governor, a small fleet with small hope. Had it been larger its going forth would not have been permitted. The Governor remained behind, thinking he could serve the Colony better in England. But the sailors of the little 'Brave' and 'Roe' had caught the fighting mania before they sailed, and instead of going with all speed to the relief of Virginia, scoured the seas for rich prizes, and like two little fighting cocks let loose attacked every sail they caught sight of, friend or foe. The natural consequence was that before they reached Madeira (they took the southern course for the sake of plunder) they had been several times thoroughly whipped, and ' all thinges spilled ' in their fights. ' By this occasion, God iustly punishing the theeuerie of our euil disposed mariners, we were of force constrained to break of our voyage intended for the reliefe of our Colony left the yere before in Virginia, and the same night to set our course for England.' In a month from their departure they recrossed the bar of Bideford, their voyage having been a disgraceful failure, yet the doings of these two miniature corsairs are recorded in Hakluyt manifestly only as specimens of English pluck, a British quality always admired, however much misdirected. Meanwhile no tidings of the ' Second colonie' and worse still, no tidings or help had the Second Colony received all this long time from England. And even to this day the echo is 'no tidings' and no help from home. This then may be called the first and great human sacrifice that savage America required of civilized England before yielding to her inevitable destiny.

And so it was that Virginia and the Armada Year shook the fortunes of Raleigh and compelled him to assign a portion of his Patent and privileges under it to divers gentlemen and merchants of London. This document, in which are included and protected the charter rights of White and others in the ' City of Raleigh,' bears date the 7th of March 1589. Matters being thus settled, with more capital and new life a ' Fifth Expedition' was fitted out in 1590 in which Governor White went out to carry aid, and to reinforce his long neglected colony of 1587. Not one survivor was found, and White returned the same year in every way unsuccessful. He soon after retired to Raleigh's estates in Ireland, and the last heard of him is a long letter to his friend Hakluyt ' from my house at Newtowne in Kylmore the 4th of February 1593.'

Raleigh's Patent, like that of Gilbert, would have expired by the limitation of six years on the 24th of March 1590 if he had not succeeded in leading out a colony and taking possession. His first colony of 1585 was voluntarily abandoned, but not his discoveries. His second colony of 1587 was surrounded with so much obscurity that though in fact he maintained no real and permanent settlement, yet it was never denied that he lawfully took possession and inhabited Virginia within the six years and also for a time in the seventh year, and therefore was entitled to privileges extending two hundred leagues from Roanoke. As long as Elizabeth lived no one disputed Raleigh's privileges under his patent, though partly assigned, but none of the Assignees cared to adventure further. The patent had become practically a dead letter. As late however as 1603 the compliment was paid Raleigh of asking his permission to make a voyage to North Virginia. As no English plantation between the Spanish and the French possessions in North America at the time of the accession of James was maintained the patent was allowed nominally to remain in force. But no one claimed any rights under it. It has been stated by several recent historians that the attainder of Raleigh took away his patent privileges, but evidence of this is not forthcoming. It is manifest that James the First, who had little regard for his own or others' royal grants or chartered rights in America, considered the coast clear and as open to his own royal bounty as it had been long before to Pope Alexander the Sixth. It was easier and safer to obtain new charters than to revive any questionable old ones.

But to all intents and purposes the interesting history of Virginia begins with Raleigh. Whence he drew his inspiration, how he profited by the experience of others, how he patronized his Magi and bound them to himself with cords of friendship and liberality; how by his very blunders and misfortunes he transmitted to posterity some of the most precious historical memorials found on the pages of English or American history, we have, perhaps at unnecessary length, endeavoured to show in this long essay on the brief and true Report of Thomas Hariot, his surveyor and topographer in Virginia, which must ever serve as the corner-stone of English American History, by a man who, though long neglected and half forgotten, must eventually shine as the morning star of the mathematical sciences in England, as well as that of the history of her Empire in the West.

It remains now to give some personal account of Thomas Hariot, whose first book as the first of the labors of the hercules club has been reproduced. Every incident in the life of a man of eminent genius and originality in any country is a lesson to the world's posterity deserving careful record. Hitherto dear quaint old positive antiquarianly slippery Anthony Wood in his Athenes Oxoniensis embodies nearly all of our accepted notions of this great English mathematician and philosopher. Anthony was indefatigable in his researches into the biography of Hariot who was both an Oxford man and an Oxford scholar. He happily succeeded in mousing out a goodly number of recondite and particular occurrences of Hariot's life. He managed, however, to state very many of them erroneously ; and he drew hence some important inferences, the reverse, as it now appears, of historical truth. This naturally leads one to inquire into his authorities. Wood's account of Hariot appeared in his first edition of 1691, and has not been improved in the two subsequent editions. For most of his facts he appears to have been indebted to Dr John Wallis's Algebra, first published in 1685, though ready for the printer in 1676 ; and for his fictions to poor old gossiping Aubrey; while his inferences, in respect to Hariot's deism and disbelief in the Scriptures, are probably his own, as we find no sufficient trace of them prior to the appearance of his Athen, unless it be in Chief Justice Popham's unjust charge at Winchester in 1603, when he is said to have twitted Raleigh from the bench with having been ' bedeviled ' by Hariot. Dr Wallis appears to have obtained part of his facts from John Collins, who had been in his usual indefatigable manner looking up Hariot and his papers as early as 1649, and wrote to the doctor of his success several letters between 1667 and 1673, which maybe seen in Professor Rigaud's Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols, Oxford, 1841, 8.

Since 1784, from time to time, several other writers have partly repeated Wood's estimate and added several new facts, as will be shown further on. But it has been reserved for the Hercules Club, now just three hundred years after Hariot left the University, to bring to light new and important contemporary evidence, sufficient, it is believed, to considerably modify our general estimate of Hariot's life and character, and to raise him from the second rank of mathematicians to which Montucla coolly relegated him nearly a century ago to the pre-eminence of being one of the foremost scholars of his age, not alone of England but of the world. Had he been walled around by church bigotry like his friend and contemporary Galileo he would unquestionably by the originality and brilliancy of his observations and discoveries have rivalled, or perhaps have shared that philosopher's victories in science. At all events it is believed that the new matter is sufficient to reopen the courts of criticism and revision in which some of the decisions respecting the use of perspective glasses, the invention of the telescope, the discoveries of the spots on the sun, the satellites of Jupiter and the horns of Venus may be reconsidered and perhaps reversed. It is believed that in logical analysis, in philosophy, and in many other departments of science few in his day were his equals, while in pure mathematics none was his superior.

Thomas Hariot was born at Oxford, or as Anthony Wood with more than his usual quaint-ness expresses it, ' tumbled out of his mother's womb into the lap of the Oxonian muses in 1560.' He was a ' bateler or commoner of St Mary's hall.' He ' took the degree of bachelor of arts in 1579, and in the latter end of that year did compleat it by determination in Schoolstreet.' Nothing of his boyhood, or of his family, except a few hints in his will, has come to light.

It is not known precisely at what time Hariot joined Walter Raleigh, who was only eight years his senior. From what their friend Hakluyt says of them both, their intimate friendship and mutually serviceable connection were already an old story as early as 1587. On the eighth calends of March 1587, that is on the 22d of February 1588, present reckoning, Hakluyt wrote from Paris to Raleigh in London,

' To you therefore I have freely desired to give and dedicate these my labors. For to whom could I present these Decades of the New World [of Peter Martyr] more appropriately than to yourself, who, at the expense of nearly one hundred thousand ducats, with new fleets, are showing to us of modern times new regions, leading forth a third colony [to Virginia], giving us news of the unknown, and opening up for us pathways through the inaccessible ; and whose every care, and thought, and effort tend towards this end, hinge upon and adhere to it ? To whom have been present and still are present the same ideas, desires, & incentives as with that most illustrious Charles Howard, the Second Neptune of the Ocean, and Edward Stafford our most prudent Ambassador at the Court of France, in order to accomplish great deeds by sea and land. But since by your skill in the art of navigation you clearly saw that the chief glory of an insular kingdom would obtain its greatest splendor among us by the firm support of the mathematical sciences, you have trained up and supported now a long time, with a most liberal salary, Thomas Hariot, a young man well versed in those studies, in order that you might acquire in your spare hours by his instruction a knowledge of these noble sciences ; and your own numerous Sea Captains might unite profitably theory with practice. What is to be the result shortly of this your wise and learned school, they who possess even moderate judgment can have no difficulty in guessing. This one thing I know, the one and only consideration to place before you, that first the Portuguese and afterwards the Spaniards formerly made great endeavours with no small loss, but at length succeeded through determination of mind. Hasten on then to adorn the Sparta[Vir-ginia] you have discovered; hasten on that ship more than Argonautic, of nearly a thousand tons burthen which you have at last built and finished with truly regal expenditure, to join with the rest of the fleet you have fitted out.'

From this extract one might perhaps reasonably infer that Hariot went directly from the University in 1580 at the age of twenty into Raleigh's service, or at latest in 1582 when Raleigh returned from Flanders. As our translation of this important passage is rather a free one the old geographer's words are here added, in his own peculiar Latin. Hakluyt in his edition of Peter Martyr's Eight Decades, printed at Paris in 1587, 8, writes of his young friend Hariot in his dedication to his older friend Sir Walter Raleigh, as follows :-

Tibi igitur has meas vigilias condonatas & confecratas efle volui. Cui enim potius, qum tibi has noui Orbis Decades offerem, qui centum fer millium ducatoru impenfa, nouis tuis clafsibus regiones nouas, nouam iam terti ducendo coloniam, notas ex ignotis, ex inaccefsis peruias, nouifsimis hifce teporibus nobis exhibes ? Cuius omnes curse, cogitationes, conatus, hue fpeflant, haec verfant, in his inhaerent. Cui cum Illuftrifsimo illo here, Carolo Hovvardo, altcro Oceani maris Neptuno, Edoardi Staffbrdij, noftri apud regem Chriftianifsimum oratoris prudentifsimi fororio, eadem ftudia, eaedem voluntates, iidem ad res magnas terra marque aggrediendas funt & fuerunt ani-morum ftimuli. Cm vero artis nauigatori peritia, prcipuum regni infularis ornamentum, Mathematicarii fcientiaru adminiculis adhibitis, fuu apud nos fplendore poffe cofequi facile per-fpiceres, Thomas Hariotum, iuuenem in illis difciplinis excellente, honeftifsimo falario iamdiu donatum apud te aluifti, cuius fubndio horis fuccefsiuis nobililsimas fcientias illas addifcercs, tuique familiarcs duces maritimi, quos habes non paucos, cum praii theoria non fine fructu incredibili coiungeret. Ex quo pulcherrimo & fapientifsimo inftitutotuo, quid breui euentutum fit, qui vel mediocri iudicio volent, facil proculdubio diuinare poterunt. Vnum hoc fcio, vnam & vnicam rationem te inire, qua prim Lufitani, deinde Caftellani, quod antea toties cum no exigua iactura funt conati, tandem ex animoru votis perficerut. Perge ergo Spartam quam nactus es ornare, perge nauem illam plufquam Argonauticam, mille cuparum fere capace, quam fumptibus plane regiis fabricatam iam tadem foelicitcr abfoluifti, reliquae tuae clafsi, quam babes egregi inftructam, adiungere.

From this early time for nearly forty years, till the morning of the 29th of October 1618, when Raleigh was beheaded, these two friends are found inseparable. Whether in prosperity or in adversity, in the Tower or on the scaffold, Sir Walter always had his Fidus Achates to look after him and watch his interests. With a sharp wit, close mouth, and ready pen Hariot was of inestimable service to his liberal patron. With rare attainments in the Greek and Latin Classics, and all branches of the abstract sciences, he combined that perfect fidelity and honesty of character which placed him always above suspicion even of the enemies of Sir Walter. He was neither a politician nor statesman, and therefore could be even in those times a faithful guide, philosopher, and friend to Raleigh.

In the year 1585, as has already been stated above, Hariot, at the age of twenty-five, went out to Virginia in Raleigh's first Colonie' as surveyor and historiographer with Sir Richard Grenville, and remained there one year under Governor Ralph Lane, returning in July 1586, in Sir Francis Drake's home-bound fleet from the West Indies. During the absence of this expedition Raleigh had received triple favors from Fortune. He had entered Parliament, been knighted, and had been presented by the Queen with twelve thousand broad acres in Ireland. These Irish acres were partly the Queen's perquisite from the Babington 'conspiracy.' Other royal windfalls had considerably increased Sir Walter's expectations, and aroused his ambition. Hariot is known to have spent some time in Ireland on Raleigh's estates there during the reign of Elizabeth, but it is uncertain when. It may have been between the autumn of 1586 and the autumn of 1588. He was in London in the winter of 1588-89 in time to get out hurriedly his report in February 1589. It is possible, however, that he went to Ireland after his book was out. He was probably the manager of one of the estates there as Governor John White was of another in 1591-93.

The next early author whom we find speaking of Hariot is his lifelong friend and companion Robert Hues or Hughes in his ' Tractatus de / Globis et eo- / rvm vsv, / Accommo-datus iis qui Lon-/dini editi funt Anno I593,/ fumptibus Gulielmi Sanderfoni / Ciuis Londinienfis/Confcriptus a Ro-/bertoHues./ Londini/ In ardibus Thomae Dawfon. / 1594.' / 8

In his dedication to Sir Walter Raleigh the author says :

Borealiora Europae noftrates diligentimme luftrarunt. Primo Hugo Willoughby eques Anglus & Richardus Chanceler has oras apperuerunt. Succedit eis Stephanus Borough, vlterius pro-grefsi funt Artunis Pet & Carol. Iackman. Sufcept funt hae nauigationes, inftigante Sebaftiano Caboto, vt, fiqu pofset fieri traiectum in regiones Synanum & Cathayac breuimmum confequeremur, at irreto haec omnia conatu, nifi quod his medijs firmatum eft commercium cum Mofchouitis. Hc cum non fuccederet, inftitutx funt nauigationes ad Borealiora Americ;, quas primo fuscepit Martinus Frobifher, fecutus eft poftca Ioannes Dauis. Ex his omnibus nauigationibus multi antiquiorum errores,magna eorum ignorantia detectacft. Atque his conatibus minus fuccedentibus, gens noftra nauibus abundans otij impatiens, in alias paries fuas nauigationes inftituerunt. Humphredus Gilbert Eques, Americ oras Hifpanis incognitas, magno animo & viribus, fucceffu non aequali noftris aperire conatus eft. Id quod tuis poftea aufpicijs (vir honoratifsime) felicius fufceptum eft quibus Virginia nobis patefacta eft, prefecto clafsis Richardo Grinuil nobili equite, quam diligentifsime luftrauit & defcripfit Thom Hariotus.

In the English edition of Robert Hues' work, London, 1638, this very interesting but somewhat irrelevant passage appears as follows:

Among whom, the first that adventured on the discovery of these parts, were, Sir Hugh Willoughby, and Richard Chanceler: after them, Stephen Borough. And farther yet then either of these, did Arthur Pet, and Charles Lackman discover these parts. And these voyages were all undertaken by the instigation of Sebastian Cabot: that so, if it were possible, there might bee found out a nearer pafsage to Cathay and China : yet all in vane ; fave only that by this meanes a course of trafficke was confirmed betwixt us and the Mofcovite.

When their attempts fucceeded not this way ; their next designe was then to try, what might bee done in the Northern Coasts of America : and the first undertaker of these voyages was Mr. Martin Frobisher: who was afterward feconded by Mr. Iohn Davis. By meanes of all which Navigations, many errours of the Ancients, and their great ignorance was discovered.

But now that all these their endeavours fucceeded not, our Kingdome at that time being well furnished in fhips, and impatient of idlenefse : they resolved at length to adventure upon other parts. And first Sir Humphrey Gilbert with great courage and Forces attempted to make a discovery of those parts of America, which were yet unknowne to the Spaniard : but the successe was not answerable. Which attempt of his, was afterward more prosperously prosecuted by that honourable Gentleman Sir Walter Rawleigh: to whose meanes Virginia was first discovered unto us, the Generall of his Forces being Sir Richard Greenville : which Countrey was afterwards very exactly furveighed and described by Mr. Thomas Harriot.