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The "Travaile" was first published by the Hakluyt Society in 1849. When and where it was written, and whether it was all composed at one time, are matters much in dispute. The first book, descriptive of Virginia and its people, is complete; the second book, a narration of discoveries in America, is unfinished. Only the first book concerns us.
By one publikely and anciently deuoted to Gods seruice, and all yours in this so good action, RICHARD HAKLUYT. Chap. I. Which declareth who Don Ferdinando de Soto was, and how he got the gouernment of Florida. Captaine Soto was the son of a Squire of Xerez of Badaioz.
Allibone knew nothing about Hortop, he should have said nothing. If the edition of 1591 was inaccessible to him, he could have found out what kind of a story-teller our ancient mariner was in the third volume of Hakluyt. We resent this slur upon Job the more because he happens to be a favorite of ours, and saw no more wonders than travellers of that day had the happy gift of seeing.
But falling in with land, he sailed northwards along the coast, to see if he could find any gulf that permitted him to proceed westwards in his intended voyage to India, and still found firm land to lat 56° N. Finding the coast here turning to the east, he despaired of finding a passage in that direction: he sailed again down the coast to the southwards, still looking everywhere for an inlet that would admit a passage by sea to India, and came to that part of the continent now called Florida; where, his victuals failing, he took his departure for England . In the preface to the third volume of his navigations, Ramusio, as quoted by Hakluyt, says that Sebastian Cabot sailed as far north in this voyage as 67° 30', where on the 11th June the sea was still quite open, and he was in full hope of getting in that way to Cathay, but a mutiny of his people forced him to return to England . Peter Martyr of Angleria, as likewise quoted by Hakluyt, says that Sebastian was forced to return to the southwards by the immense quantities of ice which he encountered in the northern part of his voyage .
"He fell out with them, and they with him," says Hakluyt. One of them, stung by his Captain's curses, "would have killed the Captaine" there and then, with his caliver, or sailor's knife. This last act was too much.
HAWKINS. The Hawkins Voyages, published by the Hakluyt Society, give the best collection of original accounts. They deal with three generations of this famous family and are prefaced by a good introduction. A Sea-Dog of Devon, by R.A.J. Walling is the best recent biography of Sir John Hawkins.
He has written the account of one of his northern voyages himself; one of those, by-the-by, which the Hakluyt Society have mutilated; and there is an imaginative beauty in it, and a rich delicacy of expression, which is called out in him by the first sight of strange lands and things and people.
This relation is said by Hakluyt to have been written by one William Rutter, to his master Anthony Hickman, being an account of a voyage to Guinea in 1562, fitted out by Sir William Gerard, Sir William Chester, Thomas Lodge, Anthony Hickman, and Edward Castelin.
Hakluyt has explained Moabar on the margin by Maliassour or Meliassour. The country here indicated is obviously the Carnatic, or kingdom of Arcot of modern times, from the circumstance of containing the shrine of St Thomas. The idols mentioned by Oderic, as filling the church of St Thomas, were probably Nestorian images; not sanctioned by the Roman ritual.
In 1893 E.J. Payne brought out a much handier edition of the Voyages of the Elizabethan Seamen to America which gives the very parts of Hakluyt we want for our present purpose, and gives them with a running accompaniment of pithy introductions and apposite footnotes.
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