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, among other authorities, A Plaine Declaration of Barmudas, in
black letter, 1613, written by one of the party. Myriads of birds
nested on the island. How the hogs came to be there is matter of
conjecture. The writer of the Plaine Declaration makes old Sir George
Somers the resourceful hero of their marvelous escape, and it was from
him that the islands took the name of Somers or Summer Islands. For
want of pitch, the seams of the vessels were paid with "a kind of hard
lime" and some "wax cast up by the sea." Strachey's A True Reportory
of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight, etc.,
Purchas, iv, p. 1734, is also by one of the shipwrecked party. The
Rev. Joseph Hunter has written with much learning, patient research,
and fatiguing prolixity to disprove the theory that Shakespeare's
Tempest was suggested by the wreck of Gates and Somers. He succeeds in
showing its relation to another occurrence, but works of imagination
do not usually have their origin in a single fact, and it is hard to
resist the conviction that the Tempest, as we have it, contains more
than one allusion to the wreck upon "the still vexed Bermoothes."
[Sidenote: Note 7, page 42.]
The beauty of the wood of certain American trees had already been
noted. The communion table in Jamestown in De la Warr's time was made
of black walnut. The pews were of cedar, and there were "fair, broad
windows," with shutters of cedar, "to shut and open as the weather
shall occasion," but there appears to have been no glass. Window glass
was little used at that time, and there probably was not a glazed
window in the colony. The pulpit was of cedar, and the font was "hewen
hollow like a canoa." Strachey, in Purchas, p. 1755.
[Sidenote: Note 8, page 42.]
Some families appear to have gone to Virginia with De la Warr. The
purpose to send families of wives and children and servants is
expressed in A True Declaration, which was dated 1610, but, as Mr.
Alexander Brown points out, issued in December, 1609.
[Sidenote: Note 9, page 48.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account