At later date we come on the seaman and his ships recorded and portrayed with a loving enthusiasm. Richard Hakluyt--"with great charges and infinite cares, after many watchings, toiles and travels, and wearying out" of his weak body--sets out for us a wonderful chronicle of the shipping to his day. He grew familiarly acquainted with the chiefest 'Captaines,' the greatest merchants, and the best mariners of our nation, and acquired at first hand somewhat more than common knowledge of the sea. He saw not only the waving banners of sea-warriors and the magnificence of their martial encounters, but lauded victory in far voyages, the opening to commerce of distant lands, the hardihood of the Merchant Venturers. He realized the value of the seaman to the nation, not alone to fight battles on the sea, but as skilful navigators to further trade and intercourse. He was not ignorant "that shippes are to litle purpose without skillfull Sea-men; and since Sea-men are not bred up to perfection of skill in much lesse time than in the time of two prentiships; and since no kinde of men of any profession in the commonwealth passe their yeres in so great and continuall hazard of life; and since of so many, so few grow to gray heires; how needful it is that . . . these ought to have a better education, than hitherto they have had." His matchless patience and care and exactitude were only equalled by his pride in the doings of the seamen and the merchants. With a joyful humility he exults in the hoisting of our banners in the Caspian Sea--not as robber marauders, but as peaceful traders under licence and ambassade--at the station of an English Ligier in the stately porch of the Grand Signior at Constantinople, at consulates at Tripolis and Aleppo, in Babylon and Balsara--"and which is more, at English Shippes coming to anker in the mighty river of Plate." In script and tabulation he glories in the tale of the ships, and sets out the names and stations of humble merchant supercargoes with the same meticulous care as the rank and titles of the Captain-General of the Armada. Alas! There was none to set a similarly gifted hand to the further course of his lone furrow. Purchas tried, but there was no great love of his subject-matter to spread a glamour on the pages. Perhaps the magnitude of the task, ever growing and gathering, and the minute and unwearying succession of Hakluyt's "Navigations and Traffiques," discouraged and deterred less ardent followers. Of voyages and expeditions and discoveries there are volumes enough, but few such intimate records as "the Oathe ministered to the servants of the Muscovie company," or the instructions given by the Merchant Adventurers unto Richard Gibbs, William Biggatt, and John Backhouse, masters of their ships, have been written since Hakluyt turned his last page.