The Boy's Hakluyt: English Voyages of Adventure and DiscoveryHakluyt, Richard
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The Boy's Hakluyt: English Voyages of Adventure and Discovery
Hakluyt, Richard
Discoveries in geography -- English -- Juvenile literature; Voyages and travels -- Juvenile literature
This ceremony over they viewed the land about them. While sandy and low
by the waterside it soon rose into fair little hills. Close by the
water’s edge were masses of grape vines. So “full of grapes” indeed was
the place that “the very beating and surging of the Sea overflowed
them.” There was such plenty “as well there as in all places else, both
on the sand and on the greene soile on the hils, as in the plaines, as
well as every little shrubb, as also climing towardes the tops of high
Cedars,” that the narrator thought that in all the world the “like
abundance” was not to be found: and he was a much-travelled man.
Ascending one of the little hills they saw the place to be an island and
not the main. Below them they beheld valleys “replenished with goodly
Cedar trees.” Upon discharging their “harquebuz-shot” such a flock of
cranes, mostly white ones, rose that their cry “redoubled by many
echoes” was “as if an armie of men had showted together.” The island was
seen to be rich in “many goodly woodes full of Deere, Conies, Hares, and
Fowle, even in the middest of Summer in incredible abundance.” The woods
contained “the highest and reddest Cedars of the world ... Pynes,
Cypres, Sarsaphras, the Lentisk, or the tree that beareth the Masticke,
the tree that beareth the vine of blacke Sinamon, of which Master Winter
[of Drake’s fleet that entered the Pacific] brought from the straights
of Magellan, and many other of excellent smel and qualitie.”
They remained at this island for two whole days before they had sight of
any natives. On the third day when on ship-board they espied a canoe
paddling toward them with three Indians in it. When it had come within
“foure harquebuz-shot” of their ships it put into the point of land
nearest to them. Two of its three occupants went up into the island,
while the other walked to and fro along the point, viewing the ships
with evident interest. Then the two captains and a few others rowed to
the shore to meet him. As they approached he made no shew of “feare or
doubt.” After he had spoken with them “of many things” which they could
not understand, he was invited by gestures to visit the ships, which he
showed was quite to his liking. On board he was entertained with a taste
of their wine and their bread, which he “liked very much,” and was given
a shirt, a hat, and some other things. When he had viewed both barks to
his satisfaction, he was sent back ashore. Again taking his canoe which
he had left in a creek he fell a-fishing not far from the ships, and in
less than half an hour he had laden his boat “as deepe as it could
swimme.” Then returning to the point of land nearest the ships he here
divided his fish into two parts, pointing one part to one of the ships
and one to the other. And so, “as much as he might,” requiting the
benefits he had received from the Englishmen, he departed from their
sight.
The next day a considerable body of natives appeared and formally made
the Englishmen welcome:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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