The discovery of it came about in this wise. In the eighteen fifties a copy of a “Hakluyt Manuscript” appeared at an auction sale of a famous private library in London, and was bought by a shrewd and indefatigable collector of rare Americana, Henry Stevens of Vermont, at that time resident in London. On a blank leaf of the manuscript the purchaser found this pencilled memorandum, evidently made by the owner of the library, Lord Valentia: “This unpublished Manuscript of Hakluyt is extremely rare. I procured it from the family of Sir Peter Thomson. The editors of the last edition [meaning the collection of Hakluyt’s works published in 1809–1812] would have given any money for it had it been known to have existed.” Sir Peter Thomson was an eighteenth century collector of choice books, manuscripts, and literary curiosities. After his death in 1770, his collection went to the hammer. Here the trace ends, for how Sir Peter got the manuscript is not disclosed. Mr. Stevens endeavored to find a permanent place for the precious thing in the library of some American historical society or in the British Museum. At length, these endeavors failing, after two or three years, he disposed of it in England to Sir Thomas Phillips, another noteworthy collector, whose library at Thirlestane House, Cheltenham, became a storehouse of historical treasure. Here it lay till 1868, when it was practically rediscovered by another American—the learned Reverend Doctor Leonard Woods, fourth president of Bowdoin College, in Maine. President Woods was at that time in England searching for certain papers of Sir Fernandino Gorges, the founder of Maine, and in this quest he visited Thirlestane House. He was one of those whose attention had been called to the manuscript by Mr. Stevens when it was in the latter’s possession. But then the Maine scholar did not fully comprehend its nature. As soon, however, as he had examined it at Thirlestane House he recognized its historical worth. Thereupon he caused an exact transcript to be made, and printed it for the first time in the Maine Historical Society’s Collections for 1877. The thesis originally bore the caption _Mr. Rawley’s Voyage_; but subsequently a title more explicitly defining its character was affixed to the copy from which the print is made; and this title in turn has been reduced for popular service to _A Discourse on Western Planting_.