IN THE YEAR 1613. 
5 
contemporary chroniclers of their exploits, were wor¬ 
thily associated. 2 
Hakluyt and Purchas are the patriarchs of British 
commercial history. In his dedication to Sir Francis 
Walsingham, of honorable memory to our countrymen 
as a leading promoter of the first attempts to colonize 
Virginia, Hakluyt states as the cause of his under¬ 
taking, that having, while a youth, had his interest 
excited in geography and cosmography by a cousin of 
the same name, he afterwards went abroad, and there 
“ both heard in speech and read in books other nations 
miraculously extolled for their discoveries and notable 
enterprises by sea; but the English, of all others, for 
their sluggish security and continual neglect of the 
like attempts, either ignominiously reported or exceed¬ 
ingly condemned.” — “ It was for stopping the mouths 
of the reproachers ” that he resolved to “ undertake the 
burden” of compiling an account of what the English 
people had accomplished. 
His first work (now rarely met with) w T as published 
in 1582, and he continued to collect and print until 
2 With a multitude of Hopes , God's Mercy's , Comforts , Deliverances , and Disap¬ 
pointments, by which many of the capes, islands, and inlets of the arctic seas were 
originally designated, most of these appellations have been supplanted by the fancies 
or claims of later visitors or rival navigators. Smith’s Sound, Wolstenholme’s Sound, 
Cape Dudley Digges, Hakluyt’s Island, and a few more of the early names, are still 
retained on the maps of the western coast of Greenland; Hakluyt’s Headland may yet 
be found at the north-western point of Spitzbergen; and Wyche’s Land (sometimes 
written Witches Land), another part of the same country, is occasionally referred to: 
but Sir Thomas Smith’s Bay, Sir Thomas Smith’s Inlet, Sir Thomas Smith’s Island, 
Point Purchas, and Purchas’s Plus Ultra, have disappeared from most of the charts of 
that island; while from Hudson’s Bay have been removed Smith’s Foreland, Cape 
Wolstenholme, Digge’s Island, &c., &c., for the reason, perhaps, that their places were 
wanted for a new series of patrons; or, it may be, because these names were thought 
to monopolize too many localities. These examples are given, not as by any means 
exhausting the catalogue, but simply as illustrating the fact. 
