Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 3 (of 8): English Explorations and Settlements in North America 1497-1689
History
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 3 (of 8): English Explorations and Settlements in North America 1497-1689
America -- Discovery and exploration; America -- History; United States -- History
“Of his behavior in England, his enemies (which canker virtue never
lacked),—they, I say, if any such yet remain,—have greatest cause
to report well, yea so well, that if his natural clemency were not
greater than was their unnatural indignation, they know themselves
what might have followed.... Being a lion he behaved himself as a
lamb, and struck not his enemy having the sword in his hand. Stoop,
England, stoop, and learn to know thy lord and master, as horses and
other brute beasts are taught to do!”
He earnestly desires to see the Christian religion enlarged, and urges
his countrymen to follow here the example of the Spaniards in the New
World. He says:—
“I am not able, with tongue or pen, to express what I conceive
hereof in my mind, yet one thing I see which enforseth me to speak,
and lament that the harvest is so great and the workmen so few. The
Spaniards have showed a good example to all Christian nations to
follow. But as God is great and wonderful in all his works, so beside
the portion of land pertaining to the Spaniards (being eight times
bigger than Italy, as you may read in the last book of the second
Decade), and beside that which pertaineth to the Portugals, there
yet remaineth another portion of that main land reaching toward the
northeast, thought to be as large as the other, and not yet known
but only by the sea-coasts, neither inhabited by any Christian men;
whereas, nevertheless, (as writeth Gemma Phrisius) in this land
there are many fair and fruitful regions, high mountains, and fair
rivers, with abundance of gold, and diverse kinds of beasts. Also
cities and towers so well builded, and people of such civility,
that this part of the world seemeth little inferior to our Europe,
if the inhabitants had received our religion. They are witty people
and refuse not bartering with strangers. These regions are called
Terra Florida and Regio Baccalearum or Bacchallaos, of the which you
may read somewhat in this book in the voyage of that worthy old man
yet living, Sebastian Cabot, in the vi. book of the third Decade.
But Cabot touched only in the north corner, and most barbarous part
thereof, from whence he was repulsed with ice in the month of July.
Nevertheless, the west and south parts of these regions have since
been better searched by other, and found to be as we have said
before.... How much therefore is it to be lamented, and how greatly
doth it sound to the reproach of all Christendom, and especially to
such as dwell nearest to these lands (as we do), being much nearer
unto the same than are the Spaniards (as within xxv days sailing
and less),—how much, I say, shall this sound unto our reproach and
inexcusable slothfulness and negligence, both before God and the
world, that so large dominions of such tractable people and pure
gentiles, not being hitherto corrupted with any other false religion
(and therefore the easier to be allured to embrace ours), are now
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