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                          Transcriber’s Note:

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                           THE BOY’S HAKLUYT

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           IN THE SAME SERIES

                  PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

------------------------------------------------------------------------

  =The Boy’s Catlin.= My Life Among the Indians, by GEORGE CATLIN.
    Edited by MARY GAY HUMPHREYS. Illustrated. 12mo

                                                             _net_ $1.50

  =The Boy’s Hakluyt.= English Voyages of Adventure and Discovery,
    retold from Hakluyt by EDWIN M. BACON. Illustrated. 12mo

                                                             _net_ $1.50

  =The Boy’s Drake.= Edited by EDWIN M. BACON.

                                                      (_In Preparation_)

[Illustration:

  QUEEN ELIZABETH GOING ABOARD THE “GOLDEN HIND.”

  From a painting by Frank Brangwyn.
]

                                  THE
                             BOY’S HAKLUYT
                           ENGLISH VOYAGES OF
                        ADVENTURE AND DISCOVERY




                                   BY

                            EDWIN M. BACON,

            AUTHOR OF “HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES IN NEW ENGLAND,”
     “LITERARY PILGRIMAGES IN NEW ENGLAND,” “THE CONNECTICUT RIVER
                AND THE VALLEY OF THE CONNECTICUT,” ETC.




                              ILLUSTRATED




                                NEW YORK
                        CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
                                  1910




                        COPYRIGHT 1908, 1909, BY
                        CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

                                   --

                       Published September, 1908








[Illustration: logos]




                                PREFACE


This account of Richard Hakluyt and his narratives of English
exploration and adventure, from the earliest records to the
establishment of the English colonies in North America, has been
prepared at the instance of Edwin D. Mead, the fine mainspring of the
far-reaching system of historical study widely known as the “Old South
Work,” for the instruction of young folk, by engaging methods, in
genuine American history. The purpose of the book was to draw the youth
of to-day to a source of American history of first importance, and a
work of eternal interest and value.

To this end I have sought to utilize the huge foolscap volumes of the
_Principal Navigations_ and to summarize or compress the narratives into
a coherent story from the earliest adventures chiefly for conquest to
those for discovery and expansion of trade, and finally for
colonization, down to the settlement of Virginia. The American note is
dominant throughout this animated story of daring, pluck, courage,
genuine heroism, and splendid nerve displayed by the English captains of
adventure and discovery North, East, and West.

I have endeavored also to recall Hakluyt’s significant work in his
publications which preceded the _Principal Navigations_, and in his
equally important personal efforts to forward American colonization by
England, in order to re-present him in his true position, recognized by
the earlier historians—that of a founder hand in hand with Raleigh of
the English colonies, out of which developed the national life of the
United States.

The dictum of William Robertson in his eighteenth century _History of
America_ (1777), that to Hakluyt England was more indebted for her
American possessions “than to any other man of that age,” was sustained
by Sir Clements Robert Markham, the English traveller, geographer, and
historian, upon the occasion, in 1896, of the fiftieth anniversary of
the founding of the Hakluyt Society, of which Sir Clements was then the
president, when he said: “Virtually Raleigh and Hakluyt were the
founders of those colonies which eventually formed the United States. As
Americans revere the name of Walter Raleigh, they should give an equal
place to Richard Hakluyt.”

Sir Clements further observed: “Excepting, of course, Shakspere and the
Dii Majores, there is no man of the age of Elizabeth to whom posterity
owes a deeper debt of gratitude than to Richard Hakluyt, the saviour of
the records of our explorers and discoverers by land and sea.”

Americans may well claim the pride of inheritance in these brave annals
of adventure on untried seas and to unknown lands. Hakluyt’s quaint
language ought not to be a hard nut to crack for the American boy when
such rich meat is within.

                                                            E. M. B.




                                CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                          PAGE

       I. BEGINNINGS OF AMERICA                                       1
      II. RICHARD HAKLUYT THE MAN                                    17
     III. “THE PRINCIPAL NAVIGATIONS”                                32
      IV. THE EARLY VOYAGES                                          36
       V. QUEST FOR THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE                            53
      VI. THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS                                  62
     VII. THE ENGLISH CLAIM TO AMERICA                               77
    VIII. VENTURES IN THE CABOTS’ TRACK                              90
      IX. THE NORTHEAST PASSAGE                                      96
       X. THE OPENING OF RUSSIA                                     104
      XI. VOYAGES FOR THE MUSCOVY COMPANY                           124
     XII. REVIVAL OF THE NORTHWEST THEORY                           143
    XIII. FROBISHER IN ARCTIC AMERICA                               150
     XIV. THE LUST FOR GOLD                                         176
      XV. HAWKINS IN FLORIDA                                        197
     XVI. DRAKE’S GREAT EXPLOITS                                    227
    XVII. ON THE PACIFIC COAST                                      253
   XVIII. GILBERT’S VOYAGES                                         285
     XIX. FOOTPRINTS OF COLONIZATION                                308
      XX. “VIRGINIA”                                                322
     XXI. RALEIGH’S LOST COLONY                                     351
    XXII. JAMESTOWN                                                 381




                             ILLUSTRATIONS


 QUEEN ELIZABETH GOING ABOARD THE “GOLDEN HIND”

      From a painting by Frank Brangwyn.                 _Frontispiece_

                                                                 FACING

                                                                   PAGE

 FAC-SIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE OF “DIVERS VOYAGES”                        10

      From the copy in the New York Public Library
        (Lenox Building).

 FAC-SIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE OF THE THIRD, OR AMERICAN,                 32
   VOLUME OF HAKLUYT’S “VOYAGES,” EDITION OF 1598–1600

      From a copy of the original edition in the New
        York Public Library (Lenox Building).

 “THE GREAT HARRY,” AN ENGLISH SHIP OF THE FIFTEENTH                 50
   CENTURY

 KIDDER’S SKETCH-MAP OF JOHN CABOT’S VOYAGE IN 1497                  69

 KING HENRY VIII                                                     94

      From a photograph, copyrighted by Walker and
        Boutall, of a painting.

 SEBASTIAN CABOT AT ABOUT EIGHTY YEARS OF AGE                       136

      Reproduced from the engraving in Seyer’s "History
        of Bristol," published in 1823. The original
        painting was attributed to Holbein and was
        destroyed by fire in 1845.

 MARTIN FROBISHER                                                   144

 QUEEN ELIZABETH                                                    180

 SIR JOHN HAWKINS                                                   198

 SIR FRANCIS DRAKE                                                  228

 DRAKE OVERHAULING A SPANISH GALLEON                                268

 SIR WALTER RALEIGH AT THE AGE OF THIRTY-FOUR                       310

      From a photograph, copyrighted by Walker and
        Cockerell, of the portrait attributed to
        Federigo Zaccaro in the National Portrait
        Gallery.

 THE ARRIVAL OF THE ENGLISHMEN IN VIRGINIA                          324

      From a drawing by John White, of Raleigh’s first
        colony, 1585.

 A MAP OF VIRGINIA, 1585                                            350

      From the map in Hariot’s “Relation.”

 THE LOST COLONY                                                    376

 A SPANISH GALLEON OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY                         382

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           THE BOY’S HAKLUYT

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                  THE
                             BOY’S HAKLUYT




                                   I
                         BEGINNINGS OF AMERICA


In the year 1582, a quarter of a century before the founding of
Jamestown, in 1607, and thirty-eight years before the establishment of
the Pilgrims at Plymouth, in 1620, there appeared in London a
pamphlet-volume entitled _Divers Voyages touching the Discouerie of
America and the Hands adaicent vnto the same, made first of all by our
Englishmen and afterwards by the Frenchmen and Britons_.

The direct and practical object of this little book was the promotion of
English colonization on the American continent, where Spain at the South
and France at the North then had firm foothold. Its mission was fully
accomplished in giving the first effective impulse to the movements
which led up to the ultimate establishment of the colonies that
eventually formed the United States.

So it has a peculiar interest, especially for all Americans who would
know their country, as a first source of the True History of the
American Nation.

The name of the compiler was modestly veiled in the earlier impressions
under the initials “R. H.” appended to an “Epistle Dedicatorie,”
addressed to “Master Phillip Sydney, Esquire,” which served for a
preface. In subsequent editions, however, the author declared himself as
“Richard Hakluyt, Preacher.”

He might with propriety have added to this simple clerical distinction
other and broader titles. For, worthy as they may have been and
doubtless were, the least of his accomplishments were those of a cleric.
Yet under thirty when _Divers Voyages_ appeared, he had already attained
an assured place among scholars for his learning in cosmography, or the
science of geography, and was particularly known to English men of
affairs as an authority on Western discovery.

_Divers Voyages_ was skilfully designed for its special purpose. The
various accounts then extant in print or in manuscript, giving
particulars of the discovery of the whole of the coast of North America,
were brought together and so artfully arranged as at once to enlighten
his laggard countrymen and to inflame their ambition and their desire
for gain. By way of introduction was presented an informing list of
writers of “geographie with the yeare wherein they wrote,” beginning
with 1300 and ending with 1580; and another of travellers “both by sea
and by lande,” between the years 1178 and 1582, who also, for the most
part, had written of their own “travayles” and voyages: Venetians,
Genoese, Portuguese, Spaniards, and Frenchmen, as well as Englishmen.
Next followed a note intended to show the “great probabilitie” by way of
America of the much-sought-for Northwest Passage to India. Then came the
“Epistle Dedicatorie” to “the right worshipfull and most vertuous
gentleman” Master Sidney (not then knighted as Sir Philip Sidney), in
which was detailed the compiler’s argument for the immediate
colonization of the parts of North America claimed by England by right
of first discovery made under her banners by the Cabots, with this
pungent opening sentence, cleverly calculated to sting the English
pride:

“I maruaile [marvel] not a little that since the first discouerie of
America (which is nowe full fourescore and tenne yeeres) after so great
conquests and plantings of the Spaniardes and Portingales [Portuguese]
there that wee of Englande could neuer have the grace to set footing in
such fertill and temperate places as are left as yet vnpossessed of
them.”

And farther along this tingling snapper:

“Surely if there were in vs that desire to aduaunce the honour of our
countrie which ought to bee in euery good man, wee woulde not all this
while haue foreslowne [forborne] the possessing of those landes whiche
of equitie and right appertaine vnto vs, as by the discourses that
followe shall appeare more plainely.”

With these preliminaries the compiler first proceeded alluringly to
exhibit “testimonies” of the Cabot discoveries of the mainland of North
America for England a year before Columbus had sighted the continent.

This evidence comprised the letters-patent of King Henry the seventh
issued to John Cabot and his three sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Santius,
authorizing the exploration of new and unknown regions, under date of
the fifth of March, 1495/6, distinguished in American history as “the
most ancient American state paper of England”; a “Note of Sebastian
Gabotes voyage of Discouerie taken out of an old Chronicle written by
Robert Fabian, sometime alderman of London”; a memorandum of “three
sauage men which hee brought home and presented vnto the King”; and
another reference to the Cabot voyages made by the Venetian historian,
Giovanni Battista Ramusio, in the preface to one of his volumes of
voyages and travels published in 1550–1563. Next followed, in the order
named, a “Declaration” by Robert Thorne, a London merchant long resident
in Seville, Spain, setting forth the discoveries made in the Indies for
Portugal, and demonstrating to Henry the eighth of England that the
northern parts of America remained for him to “take in hande,” which he
failed to do; a “Booke” by Thorne, still in Seville, later prepared, in
1527, at the request of the British ambassador in Spain, being an
“Information” on the same subject; the “Relation” of John Verazzano, the
Florentine corsair, in the service of France, describing his voyage of
discovery, made in 1524, along the eastern coast of America from about
the present South Carolina to Newfoundland; an account of the discovery
of Greenland and various phantom islands, with the coast of North
America, by the brothers Zeno, Venetian navigators, in the late
fourteenth century; and a report of the “true and last” discovery of
Florida made by Captain John Ribault for France, in 1562.

The pamphlet closed with a chapter of practical instructions for
intending colonists and an inviting list of commodities growing “in part
of America not presently inhabited by any Christian from Florida
northward.”

Its publication was a revelation to the English public. Before it
appeared the people in general of that day had little knowledge of the
accomplishments of either their own or foreign voyagers in discovery and
for commercial advantage. Merchants engaged in foreign trade or
ventures—and adventurous mariners, to be sure—kept themselves informed
on what was going on and had gone on. But the information they collected
was exclusively for the purposes of their own traffic. They were not
interested in making it public. The real object, too, of many
expeditions professing to aim at higher purposes, was, as John Winter
Jones points out in his Introduction to the modern reprint of _Divers
Voyages_, a gold-mine, or a treasure-laden galleon on the high seas.
Hakluyt’s little book immediately gave a fresh turn to public interest.
Its practical effect was the speedy forwarding of the expedition of Sir
Humphrey Gilbert in the summer of 1583, the first of the English nation
to carry people directly to erect a colony in the north countries of
America. This was an unsuccessful attempt at an establishment at
Newfoundland, and was followed by the loss of Sir Humphrey with the
foundering of his cockle-shell of a ship on the return voyage.

Two years after the appearance of _Divers Voyages_ a second work came
from the same hand for the same general object.

This was a work of broader scope and of larger significance. It was
prepared not for the press but for private and confidential circulation.
It was, in effect, a state paper, marshalling arguments in behalf of a
specific policy, and was intended expressly for the eye of queen
Elizabeth, and her principal advisers. It exhibited the political,
commercial, and religious advantages to be derived by England from
American colonization at a critical juncture of affairs. The Catholic
Philip the second of Spain was now aiming at the “suppression of
heretics throughout the world,” and Elizabeth of England was his main
object of insidious attack as “the principal of the princes of the
reformed religion.” The particular purpose of the work was to enlist the
throne in the large projects formed by Walter Raleigh in continuation of
the scheme of Sir Humphrey Gilbert (Raleigh’s half-brother) after the
lamentable fate of that chivalrous gentleman.

Only three or four copies of this paper are supposed to have been made.
Its existence was unknown to the historians for more than two and a half
centuries. The credit for bringing it to public light and for its
reproduction in print was due to American bibliophiles and scholars.

The discovery of it came about in this wise. In the eighteen fifties a
copy of a “Hakluyt Manuscript” appeared at an auction sale of a famous
private library in London, and was bought by a shrewd and indefatigable
collector of rare Americana, Henry Stevens of Vermont, at that time
resident in London. On a blank leaf of the manuscript the purchaser
found this pencilled memorandum, evidently made by the owner of the
library, Lord Valentia:

“This unpublished Manuscript of Hakluyt is extremely rare. I procured it
from the family of Sir Peter Thomson. The editors of the last edition
[meaning the collection of Hakluyt’s works published in 