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How great and agreeable, then, must our surprise be, after perusing the histories of long navigations in former days, when so many perished by marine diseases, to find the air of the sea acquitted of all malignity; and, in fine, that a voyage round the world may be undertaken with less danger, perhaps, to health, than a common tour in Europe."
The spirit of discovery, which was so vigorous during the latter end of the fifteenth and through the whole of the sixteenth century, began, soon after the commencement of the seventeenth century, to decline. Great navigations were only occasionally undertaken, and more from the immediate views of avarice or war, than from any noble and generous principles.
It was fitting that this treatise should be written by a native of Portugal, as it treats of the various ways in which the spiceries and other commodities of India were formerly brought to our part of the world, and gives an account of all the navigations and discoveries of the ancients and moderns, in both of which things the Portuguese have laboured above all other nations.
Of all the uncivilized tribes which our commander had met with in his several navigations, he never found any who had such strict notions of their having a right to the exclusive property of everything which their country produces, as the inhabitants of the sound where he was now stationed.
Only this doth convey some Shew with it, that, now some Hundred Years, there was a Knight of Wales who with Shipping, and some pretty Company did go to discover these parts, whereof, as there is some record of reasonable Credit amongst the Monuments of Wales, so there is nothing which giveth pregnant Shew thereunto, that in the late Navigations of some of our Menta Norumbega, and some other northern parts of America they found some tokens of Civility and Christian Religion; but especially they do meet with some Words of the Welsh Language, as that a Bird with a white Head should be called Penguinn, and other such like; yet because we have now invincible certainty thereof, and if any thing were done, it was only in the Northern and worse part, and the Intercourse between Wales and those parts in the space of 700 Years, was not continued, but quite silenced, we may go forward with that opinion that these Western Indies were no way known to former ages."
This Elizabethan Odyssey, the great prose epic of the English race, was first published in a single solemn folio the year after the Armada 1589. In the nineteenth century the Hakluyt Society reprinted and edited these Navigations and many similar works, though not without employing some editors who had no knowledge of the Navy or the sea.
The discovery of the continent of America by Columbus, in his third voyage, was the result of a distinct intention on his part to discover some new land, and cannot be attributed to chance. It would be difficult to define precisely the train of ideas which led Columbus to this discovery. The Portuguese navigations were one compelling cause.
If called upon by any king or chieftain, he was required to relate instantly, seven times fifty stories, namely, five times fifty prime stories, and twice fifty secondary stories. The prime stories were destructions and preyings, courtships, battles, navigations, tragedies or deaths, expeditions, elopements, and conflagrations.
From all this gross sum of his Majesty's revenue, the salaries of the governor and royal Audiencia are paid, as well as the stipends of prelates and ecclesiastical prebendaries, the salaries of the magistrates, and of the royal officials and their assistants; the pay of all the military officers and regular soldiers; his Majesty's share of the stipends for instruction, and the building of churches and their ornaments; the concessions and gratifications that he has allowed to certain monasteries, and private persons; the building of large vessels for the navigation to Nueva Espana, and of galleys and other vessels for the defense of the islands; expenses for gunpowder and ammunition; the casting of artillery, and its care; the expense arising for expeditions and individual undertakings in the islands, and in their defense; that of navigations to, and negotiations with, the kingdoms in their vicinity, which are quite common and necessary.
From a letter by Cartier, of which a translation exists in Hakluyt's "Principal Navigations," etc. Printed in Hart's "American History Told by Contemporaries." The Gulf of St. Lawrence. In 1513, a hundred and seven years before the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Balboa scaled the continental backbone at Darien and unfurled the flag of Spain by the waters of the Pacific.
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