One of the pieces of gossip which old Aubrey recounts, and which is pleasant to believe, is that Ralegh was in the habit of taking many books with him on a voyage, and of reading them assiduously in his cabin. He knew Spanish well, and was conversant with the travel-lore of Spain. Among his books would surely be the "large discourses" of Pedro de Cieza and Francisco Lopez, recounting the marvels of the land to which he was making and the adventures which the Spaniards endured in conquering it. All the terrible hardships of these first explorers had often fired his imagination, but never as now, when every movement of the ship brought him nearer to the actual scene of his endeavour. He would succeed where they had failed. And his heart must have warmed to these brave adventurers in spite of the fact that they were his enemies. He remembered their hardships, and his own, when he wrote in his "History of the World," "I cannot forbeare to commend the patient virtue of the Spaniards. We seldome or never finde that any Nation hath endured so many misadventures and miseries as the Spaniards have done in their Indian discoveries.... Tempests and shipwrecks, famine, overthrowes, mutinies, heat and cold, pestilence, and all manner of diseases, both old and new, together with extreme povertie, and want of all things needefull, have beene the enemies wherewith every one of their most noble Discoverers, at one time or other hath encountered. Many yeeres have passed over some of their heads in the search of not so many leagues; yea, more than one or two have spent their labour, their wealth and their lives in search of a golden Kingdom without getting further notice of it than what they had at their first setting forth. All which, notwithstanding the third, fourth, and fifth under-takers, have not been disheartened. Surely they are worthily rewarded with those Treasuries and Paradises which they enjoy; and well they deserve to hold them quietly, if they hinder not the like virtue in others, which (perhaps) will not be found." Men who lived through the same elemental perils have something in common, and a man like Ralegh is able to realize and to express the fact; he is able to rise above the claims of nationality at a time when his nation struggled for its very life, and he with it, against the rival nation of Spain.