THE EPISTLE DEDICATORIE 



portraitures of their ancestors, that they were most 

 vehemently inflamed unto vertue. Not that the sayd 

 wax or portraiture had any such force at all in it selfe, but 

 that by the remembring of their woorthy actes, that flame 

 was kindled in their noble breasts, and could never be 

 quenched, untill such time as their owne valure had 

 equalled the fame and glory of their progenitors. So, 

 though not in wax, yet in record of writing have I 

 presented to the noble courages of this English Monarchie, 

 the like images of their famous predecessors, with hope of 

 like efl^ect in their posteritie. And here by the way if 

 any man shall think, that an universall peace with our 

 Christian neighbours will cut off the emploiment of 

 the couragious increasing youth of this realme, he is 

 much deceived. For there are other most convenient 

 emploiments for all the superfluitie of every profession in 

 this realme. For, not to meddle with the state of Ireland, 

 nor that of Guiana, there is under our noses the great & 

 ample countrey of Virginia; the In-land whereof is found 

 of late to bee so sweete and holesome a climate, so rich 

 and abundant in silver mines, so apt and capable of all 

 commodities, which Italy, Spaine, and France can affoord, 

 that the Spaniards themselves in their owne writings 

 printed in Madrid 1586, and within few moneths after- 

 ward reprinted by me in Paris, and in a secret mappe of 

 those partes made in Mexico the yeere before for the king 

 of Spaine, (which originall with many others is in the 

 custodie of the excellent Mathematician M. Thomas 

 Hariot) as also in their intercepted letters come unto my 

 hand, bearing date 1595. they acknowledge the In-land to 

 be a better and richer countrey then Mexico and Nueva 

 Spania it selfe. And on the other side their chiefest 

 writers, as Peter Martyr ab Angleria, and Francis Lopez 

 de Gomara, the most learned Venetian John Baptista 

 Ramusius, and the French Geographers, as namely, 

 Popiliniere and the rest, acknowledge with one consent, 

 that all that mightie tract of land from 67. degrees North- 

 ward to the latitude almost of Florida was first discovered 



Ixvi 



