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That strain in him which had made his maternal ancestors gentlemen-adventurers in Tudor times, and cavaliers in the days of Charles the First, and Jacobites with James the Second, and roysterers with George the Fourth loyal, swashbuckling, and impractical, daring, dashing, lovable, absurd, bound to come to grief one day or another, as they had come that strain lying dormant, Ashley was free to wake in the spirit of the manufacturer of brushes.
Lawrence, where France was soon to enthrone herself on the heights of Quebec, and visit a beautiful bay on the western coast of Nova Scotia, where a sleepy old town, full of historic associations, still stands to recall the efforts of gentlemen-adventurers to establish a permanent settlement on the shores of the Atlantic.
"My lady's cousin, Martin, and captain of the expedition." "Is he a sailor, Adam?" "No, Martin, like most o' your fine gentlemen-adventurers, he knows no more of navigation than this cheese, which is just as well, Martin, aye, mighty well!" "How so?" "Who shall say, Martin, who shall say?" And here he took a long draught of ale.
We purposely chose the longer route by Barbados, Trinidad, and the Spanish Main, in order to be able to visit the Panama Canal Works, then only in their semi-final stage. A curious misapprehension seems to exist about that term "Spanish Main," which somehow suggests to me infinite romance; conquistadores, treasure-ships, gentlemen-adventurers, and bold buccaneers.
Here a "Company of Gentlemen-Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay" occupied some fortified stations which, during the seventeenth century, had been seized by the daring French-Canadian corsair, Iberville, who ranks with the famous Englishman, Drake. On the Atlantic coast the prosperous English colonies occupied a narrow range of country bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Alleghanies.
The gentlemen-adventurers, puffed up with vain hopes of finding a new Mexico, became soon disappointed and surly at the hard practical reality; while over all was the head of a sage and an enthusiast, a man too noble to suspect others, and too pure to make allowances for poor dirty human weaknesses.
The life of the sea-dogs, gentlemen-adventurers, and merchant-adventurers should be studied in Hakluyt's collection of Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques, and Discoveries; though many of his original authors were landsmen while a few were civilians as well.
The rest were gentlemen-adventurers, special artificers, two trained surveyors, musicians, boys, and Drake's own page, Jack Drake. There was great store of wild-fire, chain-shot, harquebusses, pistols, corslets, bows and other like weapons in great abundance. Taffeta hats. Deepe cappes for mariners. Quilted Cappes of Levant Taffeta of divers coulours, for the night. Garters of Silke.
The children scrambled through the arch, and stood trembling and blinking in the Fitzroy Street parlour, and in their ears still sounded the whistle of the wind, and the rattle of the oars, the crash of the ships bow on the rocks, and the last shout of the brave gentlemen-adventurers who went to their deaths singing, for the sake of the city they loved.
As we recall the story of these heights, we can see passing before us a picturesque procession: Sailors from the home of maritime enterprise on the Breton and Biscayan coasts, Indian warriors in their paint and savage finery, gentlemen-adventurers and pioneers, rovers of the forest and river, statesmen and soldiers of high ambition, gentle and cultured women who gave up their lives to alleviate suffering and teach the young, missionaries devoted to a faith for which many have died.
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