^{page 120 note 1} Which shows the novelty, even then, of this coast and its negroes to English sailors:—

And rowing long at last,

A river wee espy…

Into the which we bare full fast

To see what there might be.

And entering in, we see

A number of black souls,

Whose likeness seemed men to be,

But all as black as coals.

Their captain came to me

As naked as my nail,

Not having wit or honesty

To cover once his tail.

^{page 121 note 1} His first was in 1562. In both of these he used Guinea as a slave merchandise depôt for his West Indian commercial schemes.

^{page 122 note 1} Cf. Macbeth, ‘Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master of the Tiger.’

^{page 123 note 1} The famous Dutch traveller Linschoten, who was in Goa at the time, also claims to have helped Newberie and Fitch to escape.

^{page 125 note 1} ‘Instead of oakum, they use the shiverings of the bark of the said trees, and of the same they also make their tackling.’

^{page 125 note 2} March 26, 1588, in the ‘Hercules, the richest ship of English merchants’ goods that was ever known to come into this realm!'

^{page 127 note 1} In parts of which they used ‘almonds for money,’ an inconvenient coinage, as it frequently got eaten on the way—unsafe probably with errand-boys.

^{page 127 note 2} ‘800,000 cruzadoes yearly employed by the Portuguese in China, to their great advantage; their carrack, sailing annually from Macao to Japan, brings back 600,000 cr. worth of goods.’ The Chinese in Fitch's day have already got their modern reputation; they are very suspicious, and do not trust strangers, no Portuguese being allowed to sleep in Canton, their main centre of trade with the Celestials.

^{page 128 note 1} A very large number are recorded in Hakluyt's collection which contain points of interest, but which must be omitted here, as there is only space to notice representative journeys. But cf. the narratives of William Huddie's voyage in 1583, of James Welsh's in 1590, of Eaynold's and Daniel's in 1591, of Burrough's in the same year, and of the Earl of Cumberland's fleet in 1594—all to the West coast of Africa. Also the Levantine journeys of Henry Ausiell in 1586, of Richard Wrag in 1595, with their glowing descriptors of Stamboul ‘to be preferred before all the cities of Europe;’ and the patents, of 1588 for the Guinea trade, of 1585 for the Barbary commerce, with the embassage of Henry Roberts to Morocco, in 1585–6.

^{page 128 note 2} Naturally enough, the Portuguese tried to cut off the new comers, as the Moors had once cut off themselves, from ‘all knowledge of the state and traffic of the country.’ ‘Cruel man-eaters’ was the character that had been spread of English ailors.

^{page 131 note 1} 30,000l. were subscribed for the Indian company in 1599, only four years after the Dutch, in 1595, had sent their first fleet to the Spice islands; the Queen's hesitation about granting a charter for land and trade claimed in monopoly by Spain (and Portugal) was removed by a list of countries in the East to which the Spaniards could not pretend. Were they to bar Englishmen ‘from the use of the vast, wide, and infinitely open ocean sea’d?

The E.I.C. Charter of 1600 was for fifteen years. It empowered the company to trade to all places in India unclaimed by other Christian nations, to buy land for factories, to make bye-laws, &c. Its first fleet was sent out in 1601, under Sir James Lancaster, the commander of the only successful ship of 1591. He made a treaty with the King of Achin in Sumatra, gained permission to build a factory in the island, and, in alliance with the Dutch, attacked the Portuguese.

^{page 132 note 1} In this, ‘certain Tartars of our company called Holy men because they had been at Mecca,’ promised victory after going though certain mystic ceremonies; ‘to which sorcery I and my company gave no credit, but we found it true.’

^{page 132 note 2} Ivan the Terrible's letters on Jenkinson's behalf had no small effect on the King of Boghar; ‘divers times he sent for me and devised with me familiarly of the power of the Emperor and the Great Turk, as also of our countries, laws, and religion. But after all this he showed himself a very Tartar,’ for he went to the wars owing money, and left Jenkinson unpaid.

^{page 132 note 3} ‘I offered to barter with merchants from the farthest parts of India, from Bengala and the river Ganges, but they would not barter for cloth.’

As to Russian goods, Jenkinson found but ‘small utterance;’ the whole trade of Persia and Tartaria he afterwards condemned alike, ‘little utterance and small pr.fit.’ Persian commerce, he says again, goes into Syria, and so is transported into the Levant seas.

^{page 133 note 1} Jenkinson describes the Caspian very carefully, notes that it is ‘without any issue to other seas,’ ‘for it avoideth not itself, except it be underground,’ and gives a list of the bordering nations and of the great rivers that fall into it, especi-ally the Volga, whose source, ‘near Novgorod,’ and whose length, ‘above 2,000 English miles,’ are particularly related.

^{page 134 note 1} This he describes religiously, but is careful to add that only the foundation remains.

^{page 135 note 1} A man ‘of a mean stature and a fierce countenance, richly apparelled with long garments of silk and cloth of gold,’ who received Jenkinson sitting with his nobility in his pavilion with his legs crossed. But ‘perceiving that it was painful for me so to sit, he caused a stool to be brought.’ He asked Jenkinson ‘whether the Emperor of Almaine, or he of Russia, or the Grand Turk had most power, to whom I made answer as I thought most meet.’

^{page 135 note 2} The Shah, finding Jenkinson ‘believed Jesus Christus was the greatest prophet,’ broke out angrily upon him. ‘Dost thou verily believe so? Yea, that I do, said I. Oh thou infidel, said he, we have no need to have friendship wilh such, and so willed me to depart.’ Lest the print of his heretical feet should remain, a man followed Jenkinson to the court gate, strewing sand behind him. Before his outburst he had got on very diplomatically, ‘not dispraising the Turk, their late concluded friendship considered.’

^{page 136 note 1} ‘Whereas before we had the name among those Heathen to be such as they thought none like us in all respects.’

^{page 136 note 2} Richard Johnson's tales of the people in Cathay, ‘whose religion is Christian or after the manner of Christians,’ and of the ‘beautiful people’ on the way to ‘Great Cathaia,’ who eat with knives of gold, are rather proofs of ignorance than anything else. He reports cautiously that ‘ships may sail from Cathaia to India, as hath been heard by one who hath not been there himself;’ a fact well known to the Portuguese at least from 1513; and he credits the Samoyedes of Siberia not merely with Cannibalism, but with living in the sea one month of every year.

^{page 137 note 1} At the same time, George Turberville, Randolph's secretary, writes home a bitter complaint of the Russian winter and people:–

‘Wild Irish are as civil as the Russes in their kind, Hard choice which is the best of both—each bloody, rude, and blind.’ ‘Live still at home,’ is his rather commonplace advice to his friends; ‘and covet not these barbarous coasts to see.‘

^{page 139 note 1} Cf. Henry Lane's brief Discourse of North-east Discovery for thirty-three years.

^{page 140 note 1} The narratives of two of his sailors, David Ingram and Miles Philips, put on shore by Hawkins, added a good deal to English knowledge as to the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, and the Spanish possessions in Central America.

^{page 141 note 1} ‘His nature is ever when he would have his prey to cry and sob like a Christian body; and thereupon came this proverb unto women Lachrymee Crocodili, for as the crocodile when he crieth, goeth then about most to deceive, so doth a woman when she weepeth.’

^{page 141 note 2} This buccaneering of course going on while peace nominally subsisted between the courts of London and Madrid, Drake and most of the other English adventurers at this time were looked on by the Spaniards simply as pirates.

^{page 142 note 1} Now the work of Prince Henry of Portugal and his successors had begun to produce its effects in England; discovery and enterprise by land and sea were matters of popular concern.

^{page 142 note 2} At any rate, 2. The north-east and north-west schemes then looked as feasible as the south-east and south-west had looked 100 years before. With the successes of Diaz and Da Gama, Columbus and Magellan, in the near past, the plans of Willoughby, of Cabot, of Gilbert, or of Jenkinson did not seem at all impossible; and, 2. Though the schemes themselves failed, they led to a great deal of incidental gain, e.g. the trade with Russia, the Newfoundland fisheries, the English discoveries in the north-east and north-west. Even the American colonies as first founded were not without reference to the northwest attempts. Virginia would be a good half-way house, some thought, for Labrador and Frobisher's Straits.

^{page 143 note 1} Whom the Norse discoverers of the eleventh century had found so much further south.

^{page 144 note 1} Frobisher having learnt that three of his five lost men were still alive was ready to run great risk in trying to recover them. One Esquimaux rascal pretended lameness, sat down on the shore and howled to the Englishman for help, ‘but our general thought good to cure him’ by ordering a shot to be fired ‘which grazed before his face.’ The counterfeit villain ‘deliverly fled, without any impediment at all, and this was all the answer we could have of our men.’

^{page 144 note 2} Dudley, Earl of Warwick, had been one of Frobisher's liberal patrons.

^{page 145 note 1} Yet Captain Fenton and other gentlemen had formed a plan of staying behind and wintering, ‘in so unhealthful a country,… whom neither the nipping storms of the raging winter nor the intemperature of the land, neither the savageness of the people nor the sight of so many strange meteors, could refrain; with so many casualties before their eyes, the least whereof would have made a milksop Thersites astonished.’ They were prevented by the sinking of the bark ‘Dionyse’ and the absence of the ‘Thomas’ of Ipswich with their stores.

^{page 145 note 2} E.g., the first seat of the colony to be by the sea; mines and mineral weallh not so important as commercial activity, a temperate climate, and sweet air. Without sea traffic Hakluyt believes the enterprise will be ‘reproachful to us and a let to good purposes.’ ‘And of merchandise they cannot live unless the sea or the land yield commodity. So the ‘seat’ is to be planted ‘where natural commodities may draw access of navigation.’ ‘All humaiity’ is to be used to the natives. A navigable river or lake is most requisite. Every means is to be used to improve the soil, but the command of the sea is of the first importance, and an island or estuary site is declared preferable to any other.

Drake met some of these soon after, and one of them made off with his gold-laced cap, which the savage then ‘shared with his fellow, the cap to one and the band to the other.’

^{page 147 note 1} When they saw an eclipse of the moon (September 15), about which the English noticed sarcastically that it ‘did neither impair our state, nor her clearing amend us a whit.’

^{page 147 note 2} One of the Spaniards here, ‘seeing persons of that quality in those seas, all to crossed and blessed himself,’ but he was soon ‘under hatches’ with the others.

^{page 148 note 1} The pilot had two ‘fair’ silver-gilt bowls, to whom Drake pleasantly remarked: ‘Signior pilot, I must needs have one of them,’ ‘whom the pilot yielded unto, because he could not otherwise choose. So when the pilot had gone out his boy said to our general, “Our ship shall now be called the ‘Cacapiata’ and yours the ‘Cacafuego’”—which pretty speech ministered matter of laughter to us, both then and long after.’

^{page 149 note 1} ‘Who striketh at thee, Drake, striketh at us,’ were the traditional words of the Queen to him when she let him start.

^{page 150 note 1} The letters patent granted Gilbert ‘free licence to discover and view such remote, heathen, and barbarous lands, not actually possessed of any Christian people.’ Gilbert was unable to act with effect for five years, but ‘standing long upon his determination, without means to satisfy his desire,’ he had even ‘granted assignments to persons of mean ability to plant and fortify in the north parts of America about the river of Canada;’ but ‘time went away without anything being done.’

^{page 152 note 1} Cf. the relation of Richard Clarke of Weymouth; Sir George Knight's true rep rt of the late discoveries, from Edward Hayes' account; Thomas Aldworth's letter to Walsingham, March 27, 1583, concerning a western voyage; Carlisle's brief summary discourse of April 1583 upon the intended voyage in the same direction, and the letters patent granted to Walter Raleigh similar to those before given to Gilbert.

^{page 152 note 2} Starting on April 27, 1584, by July 2 they were off the Nor h American coast in ‘shoal water, where they smelt so sweet and strong a smell, as if they had been in the midst of some delicate garden, abounding with all kinds of flowers.’ Reaching the land they bad a ‘conference with a savage,’ and soon ‘fell to trading with’ the natives, a ‘people most gentle, loving and faithful, void of all guile and treason, and such as live afier the manner of the golden age.’

^{page 152 note 3} When, as Raleigh said, the Armada had been ‘beaten and shuffled together from the Lizard to Portland, from Portland to Calais, and from Calais driven with squibs from their anchors, chased out of sight of England, and round about Scotland and Ireland, where they were crushed against the rocks, and those that landed broken, slain and sent from village to village, coupled in halters; with all which so terrible an ostentation, they did not so much as sink or take one bark, pinnace, or cockboat of ours, or ever burnt so much as one sheepcote of this land.’

^{page 154 note 1} ‘A good mind if in a good cause,’ Hakluyt remarks grimly, ‘on the constancy of this Fleming.’

^{page 154 note 2} These are elaborately described by Cavendish, ‘sailing as well right against the wind, as before the wind.’ His account of the barter with these natives, little pieces of old iron against potato roots, while a heavy swell was bobbing the canoes up and down, is very picturesque.

^{page 155 note 1} ‘Carved and cut with sundry devices all over the body.’

^{page 155 note 2} Java and Sumatra.

^{page 155 note 3} Adorned with a church, a ‘causey,’ and a great freestone cross set up in 1571. Cf. Linschoten's account of the destruction wrought by Candish in the island.

^{page 156 note 1} They made a ‘lamentable noise’ when first sighted, ‘ screeching like the howling of wolves.’

^{page 157 note 1} At first Davis declared this only ‘ministered occasion of laughter to him and he ordered his men to treat them gently, supposed it to be hard in so short a time to make them know their evils;’ but afterwards he got as angry as his men. From the first he let the Esquimaux know plainly that he ‘did contemn their sorcery,’ which, at any rate, would clear their minds. The worst thing about them was their way of ‘practising their devilish nature with slings and stones.’

^{page 158 note 1} On the outward course (second voyage) Davis had divided his fleet, sending two ships to seek the passage between Greenland and Iceland to the latitude of 80° if possible. These crews performed at least the first part of their task and then fell to desperate fighting with the Esquimaux.

^{page 158 note 2} After one of our chief merchant patrons of these ventures.

^{page 158 note 3} Earl of Cumberland's Isles, Lumley's Inlet, Warwick's Foreland, Chidlie's Cape, Darcie's Island.

^{page 158 note 4} Thus he found hope in Lumley's Inlet, &c., in the great ‘ruts of the water, whirling and overfalling as it were the fall of some great water through a bridge.’

^{page 159 note 1} Lane and Hariot were the two keenest observers of the colony. Hariot combined something of the missionary, the botanist, and the fanner with the fore-sight and breadth of a statesman's view.

^{page 160 note 1} The storm indeed was so bad that it ‘had like to have driven all on shore if the Lord had not held His holy arm over them.’

^{page 160 note 2} One argument was ‘seeing our hope for supply with Sir Richard Grenville, so undoubtedly promised before Easter, not yet come, neither likely.’

^{page 160 note 3} Because there were not any English cities, nor such fair houses, nor any of their accustomed dainty food, nor any soft beds of down and feathers, the country was to them miserable and the report thereof according.

^{page 161 note 1} Gosnold's Hope.

^{page 162 note 1} ‘For all the earth does not yield the like confluence of streams and branches, the one crossing the other so many times, and all so fair and large, and so like one to another, that as no man can tell which to take, one would be carried in a circle amongst multitudes of islands,’ all bordered with high trees, shutting out any distinct view. The Orinoco alone had nine branches on the north, and seven other ‘fallings into the sea, on the south’ (?). The islands between these arms were often as big as the Isle of Wight.

^{page 163 note 1} A preservative against poison ‘as… sovereign as any unicorn's horn,’ as Thomas James reports to Burleigh, September 14, 1591, about the walrus ivory of the north.

^{page 163 note 2} Raleigh makes a great point of the natives' hatred of the Spaniards, and of his own good treatment of the former. Thus ‘I protest before the majesty of the living God’ that none of the English ‘ever took any of their women,’ though they had many ‘young and excellently favoured in their power.’ Also his men never took ‘pine or potato’ without ‘giving them contentment.’

^{page 163 note 3} Cf. (1) of voyages to the St. Lawrence, &c.; John James's account in letter to Burleigh September 14, 1591, of the discovery of the Isle of Ramea from St. Malo, the voyage of M. Hill of Redrife in the ‘Marigold’ to Cape Breton in 1593, of George Drake of Apsham to Ramea in 1593, of Rice Jones in the ‘Grace’ of Bristol to the St. Lawrence in 1594; of Charles Leigh to Cape Breton and Ramea in 1597. (2) of voyages to South America, James Lancaster's journey to Brazil; 1594; Thomas Candish's last voyage in 1591–3 to Magellan's Straits; the Earl of Cumberland's expedition in 1586 ‘intended for the South Sea,’ but performed but little further than the River of Plate, and the same Earl's attempt in 1594 which went only to the Azores. (3) of voyages to the West Indies, those of Sir Robert Duddeley in 1594–5; of Sir Amyas Preston in 1595; of Sir Anthony Sherley, the Persian and Russian traveller of 1601, &c., in 1596–7, and the last voyage of the great sea kings Drake and Hawkins in 1595. (4) of other voyages, those of Richard Rainolds and Thomas Daniel in 1591; of Sir John Burrough in 1592, and of the ‘Tobie’ in 1593, which all stopped at or came to grief upon the west coast of Africa. Among these enterprises, Preston's ‘entered Jamaica’ in 1595; Lancaster's in 1594 was of purely military interest, but shows the aggressive Protestantism of English sailors in the bitterest manner; Duddeley's in 1594 is remarkable for its ships' names, the ‘Bear,’ the ‘Frisking,’ and the ‘Earwig,’ like the ‘Why not I’ of Cumberland's fleet in 1594, and the wreck of the ‘Tobie’ near Cape Sprat in 1593, with the dying men singing their metrical psalms, ‘Help, Lord, for good and godly men,’ reads like a chapter of Cromwellian Puritanism.

What was done by Hudson and Baffin under Elizabeth we do not know, they only appear in 1607, 1612 respectively. But Hudson was bjrn in 1550, and both of them really belong to the Elizabethan age.

The spirit of the new enterprise was never better expressed than by Duddeley's confession, ‘having ever since I could conceive of anything, been delighted with the discoveries of navigation, I fostered in myself that disposition till I was of more years and better ability to undertake such a matter.’