The main contemporary collectors of materials for the history of the early voyages to America were Richard Eden, Richard Hakluyt, and Samuel Purchas. Eden's _Decades of the New World or West Indies_ (7 vols., 1555) consists of abstracts of the works of foreign writers--Peter Martyr, Oviedo, Gomara, Ramusio, Ziegler, Pigafetta, Munster, Bastaldus, Vespucius, and others. Richard Hakluyt first published _Divers Voyages_ (1582; reprinted by the Hakluyt Society) and then his _Principal Voyages_ (3 vols., folio, 1589; reissued 1600). Samuel Purchas's first volume appeared in 1613 under the title, _Purchas: His Pilgrimage of the World, or Religions Observed in all Ages and Places Discovered, from the Creation unto this Present_. The four subsequent volumes were published in 1623 under the title, _Hakluytius Posthumous, or, Purchas: His Pilgrimes._ Among these three compilers Hakluyt enjoys pre-eminence, and the Hakluyt Society has supplemented his labors by publishing in full some of the narratives which Hakluyt, for reasons of accuracy or want of space, abbreviated. _The Historie of Travaile into Virginia_, by William Strachey, secretary to Lord Delaware, was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1848, and this book contains excellent accounts of the expeditions sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to Roanoke, the voyages of Bartholomew Gosnold and George Weymouth, and the settlement made under its charter by the Plymouth Company at Sagadahoc, or Kennebec. The only official collection of documentary materials that covers the entire period is the _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1574-1696_ (9 vols., 1860-1903). George Sainsbury, the editor, was a master at catching the salient points of a manuscript. Many of his abstracts have elsewhere been published in full. The principal private collectors are E. Hazard, _State Papers_ (2 vols., 1792-1794); Peter Force, _Tracts_ (4 vols., 1836-1846); Alexander Brown, _Genesis of the United States_ (2 vols., 1891); Albert Bushnell Hart, _American History Told by Contemporaries_ (4 vols., 1898-1902); Maryland Historical Society, _Archives of Maryland_; and the series called _Documents Relating to the Colonial History of New York_, edited by John Romeyn Brodhead. Two convenient volumes embodying many early writings are Stedman and Hutchinson, _Library of American Literature_, I. (1888); Moses Coit Tyler, _History of American Literature During the Colonial Time, 1607-1676_, I. (1897). VIRGINIA