The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the People — John Shaqi
The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the PeopleEggleston, Edward
History
The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the People
Eggleston, Edward
United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
See the careful and learned discussion of the Voyages of Cabot by the
late Charles Deane, in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of
America, vol. iii. Mr. Deane effectually destroys the delusion which
so long gave the credit of this discovery, or a part of it, to
Sebastian Cabot, the son of the real discoverer. Mr. Henry Harrisse,
in John Cabot, the Discoverer of America, and in an earlier work, Jean
et Sebastien Cabot, etc., reaches the same conclusion. He even doubts
Sebastian's presence in the expeditions of his father, John Cabot,
etc., p. 48.
[Sidenote: Note 2, page 4.]
Yet George Beste, who sailed with Frobisher, says: "Now men neede no
more contentiously strive for roume to build an house on, or for a
little turffe of ground, ... when great countreys and whole worldes
offer and reache out themselves to them that will first voutsafe to
possesse, inhabite, and till them." These countries, he says, "are
fertile to bring forth all manner of corne and grayne, infinite sortes
of land cattell, as horse, elephantes, kine, sheepe, great varietie of
flying fowles of the ayre, as phesants, partridge, quayle, popingeys,
ostridges, etc., infinite kinds of fruits, as almonds, dates, quinces,
pomegranats, oringes, etc., holesome, medicinable, and delectable"
(Frobisher's Voyages, Hakluyt Society, p. 38).
[Sidenote: Note 3, page 8.]
Ralegh, in his History of the World, book i, chap, viii, sec. xv, has
an interesting digression on the danger of trusting such
communications, and he relates an anecdote of misapprehension by this
very party sent under Grenville and Lane: "The same happened among the
English, which I sent under Sir Richard Greeneville to inhabit
Virginia. For when some of my people asked the name of that country,
one of the savages answered, '_Wingandacon_,' which is as much as to
say, as, _'You wear good cloaths,' or gay cloaths_." From this answer
it came that the coast of North Carolina was called "Wingandacon," or,
in its Latinized form, Wingindacoa, while the chief, or "king," of the
country appears in the narratives of the time as Wingina. Ralegh says
that Yucatan means merely "What say you?" and that Peru got its name
from a similar mistake.
[Sidenote: Note 4, page 8.]
I found the original of this map among the drawings made by John White
in the Grenville Collection in the British Museum. It was reproduced
to accompany a paper of mine on the Virginia Colony in the Century
Magazine of November, 1882. It excited interest among scholars, as it
was supposed to have been previously unknown. A copy was afterward
found, however, in the collection made by Dr. Kohl for the State
Department at Washington. The drawings in the Sloane MSS., British
Museum, attributed to John White by Dr. E. E. Hale, in the
Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, iv, 21, are not
White's originals. The latter are in the Grenville Collection. See my
comparison of the two in The Nation of April 23, 1891.
[Sidenote: Note 5, page 10.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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