Personal 

 Reminiscences. 



THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



he has collected in conversation. These stray references 

 reveal him to us as indefatigable in research, at the 

 Court, or on the highway, losing no opportunity of 

 adding a single fact or observation to his store. We 

 learn that at Paris he talked twice with Don Antonio, 

 the Portuguese Pretender, who showed him a map of 

 the North West passage ; and with * five or six of his 

 best captains and pilots, one of whom was born in East 

 India.' We find him ' in the Queen's privy gallery at 

 Westminster,' or in the King's Library at Paris, or 

 introduced by his friend, the Bishop of Chichester, to 

 Lord Lumley's stately library, examining globes, con- 

 sulting originals, copying manuscripts. Or he is in 

 conversation with Mr. Jennings and Mr. Smith, 

 'the master and master's mate of the ship called the 

 Tohy^ belonging to Bristol,' who bring him tales from 

 Spain concerning the natives of Florida; or with 'an 

 English gentleman. Captain MuiFett,' who has been a 

 prisoner in Spain, and reports how the King of Spain 

 fears nothing so much as the planting of an English 

 colony in America ; or with a nameless sailor, ' one of 

 mine acquaintance of Ratcliffe,' who tells how the French 

 fishers attacked the Spanish fishers at Newfoundland, 

 and how he, the English sailor, in the name of fair 

 play, defended the Spaniards. So we catch glimpses of 

 Richard Hakluyt wandering and enquiring without rest 

 or remission. He has friends among French sailors ; 

 one of them, Stephen Bellinger of Rouen, gives him 

 a piece of supposed silver ore, and shows him beasts' 

 skins, dressed and painted by the Indians ; another shows 

 him a piece of the tree called Sassafras, brought from 

 Florida, and expounds its high medicinal virtue. Mr. 



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