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The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation
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General SummaryThe narratives of the voyages of Elizabethan mariners form England’s true prose epic; and in Richard Hakluyt she found, not her Homer, indeed, but the man who did most to preserve the records of these voyages for succeeding times. His fame mainly rests on The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, a large work in three volumes, of which a second edition was published in 1596–1600. As the title indicates, it is a compilation of the various accounts of the adventurous journeys made by English seamen in the Old World and the New, chiefly during the sixteenth century. Had not Hakluyt formed his collection, doubtless many of the narratives in it would have been lost. The book is a treasure-house of material for the history of geographical discovery and colonization. It also contains many interesting descriptions of aboriginal peoples.
Historical SummaryThe history of the English in America may be said to begin with the three slave-trading voyages of Sir John Hawkins of Plymouth. These were made in the years 1562–63, 1564–65, and 1567–68. On his first voyage Hawkins took a cargo of negro slaves from Africa to the Spanish colony of Hispaniola (Haiti). His were the first English ships to navigate the West Indian seas. Hawkins’s second voyage was on a more extensive scale. He sailed with three ships to the Guinea coast, procured a large number of negroes, and then started across the Atlantic to the West Indies. The first land sighted was the island of Dominica, one of the Lesser Antilles. From Dominica Hawkins sailed southward to the coast of Venezuela. Here he came into contact with the Cumanas, an Indian tribe which had reached a considerable degree of civilization. They lived in fixed villages, practiced agriculture, and were bold and skillful warriors.
Chapter XLV
the Aborigines of the New World1
224. The Indians of Dominica and Venezuela2
The cannibals of this island, and also others adjacent, are the most desperate warriors in the West Indies, by the report of the Spaniards, who are never able to conquer them. . . . Not two months past, in the said island, a ship being driven to water there, was in the night set upon by the inhabitants, who cut its cable, whereby the sailors were driven ashore and so taken by them and eaten. The Green Dragon of Newhaven, whose captain was one Bontemps, came to one of those islands, called Grenada; and, being driven to water, could not do so on account of the cannibals, who fought with him very desperately for two days. For our part, also, if we had not lighted upon the most deserted place in all that island, we could not have missed them, but should have been greatly troubled by them.
Near this place were certain Indians, who the next day after we arrived came down to us, presenting mill and cakes of bread, which they had made of a kind of corn called maize.2 . . . Also they brought down to us hens, sweet potatoes, and pineapples, which we bought for beads, pewter whistles, glasses, knives, and other trifles.
These sweet potatoes are the most delicate roots that may be eaten, and far exceed our parsnips or carrots. Their pineapples are of the bigness of two fists, the outside whereof is
rough, but it is soft like the rind of a cucumber, and the inside eateth like an apple; but it is more delicious than any sweet apple sugared. The Indians are of tawny color, having every one of them, both men and women, hair all black, the women wearing the same hanging down to their shoulders, and the men rounded, and without beards. Neither men nor women allow any hair to grow in any part of their body, but daily pull it off as it groweth. . . . These people are very small feeders; for traveling they carry but two small bottles of gourds, wherein they put, in one the juice of sorrel whereof they have great store, and in the other flour of their maize, which, being moist, they eat, taking sometime of the other.
Every man carries his bow and arrows. Some arrows are poisoned for wars. These they keep together in a cane, which cane is of the bigness of a man’s arm; other arrows are provided with broad heads of iron, wherewith they strike fish in the water. . . . They are such good archers that the Spaniards for fear thereof arm themselves and their horses with quilted canvas two inches thick, and leave no place of their body open to their enemies, except their eyes, which they may not hide; and yet oftentimes are they hit in that so small an opening. Their poison is of such a force that a man being stricken therewith dieth within four-and-twenty hours, as the Spaniards affirm; and, in my judgment, it is likely there can be no stronger poison as they make it. They use apples which are very fair and red of color, but are a strong poison, together with venomous bats, vipers, adders, and other serpents. Of all these they make a mixture, and therewith anoint the points of their arrows.
1 , edited by Richard Hakluyt. 12 vols. Glasgow, 1903–1905. James MacLehose and Sons.
2 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, vol. x, pp. 25, 27–28.
1 The narrative of this voyage is by John Sparke, one of the members of the expedition.
2 Indian corn, or maize, one of the most important of the cereals, originated in the New World, where it was extensively cultivated.
Chicago: The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation in Readings in Early European History, ed. Webster, Hutton (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1926), 483–484. Original Sources, accessed November 21, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=N9ADMFUD7AHQFAU.
MLA: . The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, in Readings in Early European History, edited by Webster, Hutton, Boston, Ginn and Company, 1926, pp. 483–484. Original Sources. 21 Nov. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=N9ADMFUD7AHQFAU.
Harvard: , The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation. cited in 1926, Readings in Early European History, ed. , Ginn and Company, Boston, pp.483–484. Original Sources, retrieved 21 November 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=N9ADMFUD7AHQFAU.
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