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bays, straits, capes, rivers, empires, kingdoms, dukedoms, and ter- 

 ritories of each part; with declaration also of their special com- 

 modities, and particular wants, which by the benefit of traffic, and 

 intercourse of merchants, are plentifully supplied. From the 

 map he brought me to the Bible, and turning to the hundred and 

 seventh psalm, directed me to the twenty-third and twenty-fourth 

 verses, where I read, " that they which go down to the sea in ships, 

 and occupy by the great waters, they see the works of the Lord, 

 and his wonders in the deep." Which words of the prophet, together 

 with my cousin's discourse, containing things of high and rare de- 

 light to my young nature, took in me so deep an impression, that 

 I constantly resolved, if ever I were preferred to the University, 

 where better time and more convenient place might be ministered 

 for these studies, I would, by God's assistance, prosecute that 

 knowledge and kind of literature, the doors whereof (after a sort) 

 were so happily opened before me. 



" It cannot be denied, but, as in all former ages, there have 

 been men in our nation full of activity, stirrers abroad, and 

 searchers of the remote parts of the world; so in this most 

 famous and peerless government of her most excellent majesty 

 queen Elizabeth, her subjects, through the special assistance and 

 blessing of God, in searching the most opposite corners and quar- 

 ters of the world, and to speak plainly, in compassing the vast 

 globe of the earth more than once, have excelled all the nations 

 and people of the earth. 



" Lucius Floras, in the very end of his history, " De gestis Ro- 

 manorum," recordeth as a wonderful miracle, that the Seres, which 

 I take to be the people of Cathay, or China, sent ambassadors to 



