THE PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, 1598. 



A preface to the Reader as touching the princi- 

 pal! Voyages and discourses in this first part. 



Aving for the benefit and honour of my 

 Countrey zealously bestowed so many 

 yeres, so much traveile and cost, to bring 

 Antiquities smothered and buried in darke 

 silence, to light, and to preserve certaine 

 memorable exploits of late yeeres by our 

 English nation atchieved, from the greedy 

 and devouring jawes of oblivion : to gather likewise, and as 

 it were to incorporate into one body the torne and scattered 

 limmes of our ancient and late Navigations by Sea, our 

 voyages by land, and traffiques of merchandise by both : 

 and having (so much as in me lieth) restored ech parti- 

 cular member, being before displaced, to their true joynts 

 and ligaments ; I meane, by the helpe of Geographie and 

 Chronologie (which I may call the Sunne and the Moone, 

 the right eye and the left of all history) referred ech 

 particular relation to the due time and place : I do this 

 second time (friendly Reader, if not to satisfie, yet at 

 least for the present to allay and hold in suspense thine 

 expectation) presume to offer unto thy view this first part 

 of my threefold discourse. For the bringing of which 

 into this homely and rough-hewen shape, which here thou 

 seest ; what restlesse nights, what painefull dayes, what 

 heat, what cold I have indured ; how many long & 

 chargeable journeys I have traveiled ; how many famous 

 libraries I have searched into ; what varietie of ancient 



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