SIR JOHN SUCKLING. 13 



" What mighty princes poets are ! Those things 

 The great ones stick at, and our very kings 

 Lay down, they venture on ; and with great ease 

 Discover, conquer, what and where they please. 

 Some phlegmatic sea-captain would have staid 

 For money now, or victuals ; not have weigh'd 

 Anchor without 'em : Thou (Will) dost not stay 

 So much as for a wind, but go'st away, 

 Land'st, view'st the country ; fight'st, put'st all to rout 

 Before another could be setting out ; 

 And now the news in town is, ' Davenant's come 

 From Madagascar, fraught with laurel, home ; ' 

 And welcome (Will) for the first time, but prithee, 

 In thy next voyage, bring the gold with thee." 



The fifth decade of the seventeenth century was thus, it 

 appears, most prolific in works upon the great African island. 



Towards the end of the century an account was written 

 (but not published until some years later) of the adventures 

 and extreme hardships suffered by an English sailor upon a 

 small island off the western coast of Madagascar. This was 

 entitled — 



"AKelation of Three Years' Sufferings of Robert Everard upon the 

 Island of Assada, near Madagascar, in a Voyage to India, in the year 1686, 

 and of his Wonderful Preservation and Deliverance and arrival at London, 

 Anno 1693."* 



This account, which occupies twenty-three pages of small 

 folio print, contains several interesting particulars of the 

 customs of the people, amongst which is the statement that 

 on one occasion twenty children were circumcised by the 

 women. The writer had evidently a hard time during his 

 three years' residence ; for, although he made shot for the 

 king, because he could not also find gun-flints he was turned 

 out of doors and left to shift for himself. He obtained food 

 in the shape of fruit and roots, shell-fish and turtles, but he 

 had to lodge under a tree only, for two years and nine months, 

 although on one occasion, he says, it rained continuously for 

 three months. As he was quite naked, he kept a fire burning 



* Pages 259-282 in vol. vi. of A Collection of Voyages and Travels, some now 

 first printed from the Original Manuscripts, d:c. London, Churchill, 1732. 



