The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 13: America, Part II — John Shaqi
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 13: America, Part IIHakluyt, Richard
History
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 13: America, Part II
Hakluyt, Richard
Discoveries in geography -- English; Voyages and travels
For I my selfe haue heard this report made sundry times by diuers of our
countreymen, who haue dwelt in the Southerly parts of the West Indies,
some twelue yeeres together, and some of lesse time; that the people in
those parts are easily reduced to ciuility both in maners and garments.
Which being so, what vent for our English clothes will thereby ensue, and
how great benefit to all such persons and artificers, whose names are
quoted in the margent,(3) I do leaue to the iudgement of such as are
discreet and questionlesse; hereby it will also come to passe, that all
such townes and villages as both haue beene, and now are vtterly decayed
and ruinated (the poore people thereof being not set on worke, by reason
of the transportation of raw wooll of late dayes more excessiuely then in
times past) shal by this meanes be restored to their pristinate wealth and
estate: all which doe likewise tend to the inlargement of our nauy, and
maintenance of our nauigation.
To what end need I endeuour my selfe by arguments to proue that by this
voyage our nauie and nauigation shalbe inlarged, when as there needeth
none other reason then the manifest and late example of the neere
neighbours to this realme, the kings of Spaine and Portugall, who since
the first discouery of the Indies, haue not onely mightily inlarged their
dominions, greatly inriched themselues and their subiects: but haue also
by iust account trebled the number of their shippes, masters and mariners,
a matter of no small moment and importance?
(M21) Besides this, it will prooue a generall benefit vnto our countrey,
that through this occasion, not onely a great number of men which do now
liue idlely at home, and are burthenous, chargeable, and vnprofitable to
this realme, shall hereby be set on worke, but also children of twelue or
fourteene yeeres of age, or vnder, may bee kept from idlenesse, in making
of a thousand kindes of trifling things, which wil be good merchandize for
that countrey. (M22) And moreouer, our idle women (which the Realme may
well spare) shall also be imployed on plucking, drying, and sorting of
feathers, in pulling, beating, and working of hempe, and in gathering of
cotton, and diuers things right necessary for dying. All which things are
to be found in those countreys most plentifully. And the men may imploy
themselues in dragging for pearle, woorking for mines, and in matters of
husbandry, and likewise in hunting the whale for Trane, and making casks
to put the same in: besides in fishing for cod, salmon, and herring,
drying, salting and barrelling the same, and felling of trees, hewing and
sawing of them, and such like worke, meete for those persons that are no
men of Art or Science.
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