Woods for the Maine Historical Society, and has since been edited with valuable notes by Mr Charles Deane of Cambridge and with an Introduction by Dr Woods. It appeared in 1877 as the second volume of the second series of the Society’s Collections. This Treatise of Hakluyt under Raleigh’s inspiration may be regarded as the harbinger of Virginia history. Though intended for a special purpose, it is of the highest importance in developing the history of English maritime policy at that time, and defining the growth of the English arguments, advantages and reasons for western planting. The book is full of personal hints, and is immensely suggestive, showing us more than anything else the master hand of Master Hakluyt in moulding England’s ‘sea policie’ and colonial navigation. No mere geographical study by Hakluyt could alone have produced this remarkable volume. It is the combination of many materials, and the result of compromising divers interests. Hakluyt had already, though still a young man under thirty, entered deeply into the study of commercial geography, and had in 1582 published his _Divers Voyages_ dedicated to his friend Sir Philip Sidney, son-in-law to the chief Secretary Walsingham. In the Spring of 1583 the Secretary sent Hakluyt down to Bristol with a letter to the principal merchants there to enlist their co-operation in a project of discovery and planting in America somewhere between the possessions of the French in Canada and the Spaniards in Florida, which his son-in-law Master Christopher Carleil was developing under the auspices of the Muscovie Company, and for which they were about to ask the Queen for a patent independent of Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s. In the summer of 1583 Hakluyt thought to go to Newfoundland with Gilbert’s expedition, according to the letter of Parmenius, but fortunately did not go. But in the autumn of the same year Walsingham sent him to Paris nominally as chaplain to the English Ambassador at the French court, Sir Edward Stafford, but really to pursue his geographical investigations into the west and learn what the French and Spanish were doing in these remote regions, and what were their particular claims, resources and trade. Before his departure for Paris, the ‘Golden Hinde’ had returned to Falmouth with the heavy news of the fate of Gilbert and the consequent certain forfeiture of his patent, notwithstanding it had still some nine months to run. Though Sir Humphrey had taken formal possession of Newfoundland, as no colony was left there, his rights and privileges would lapse as a matter of course.