A preface to the Reader as touching the principall Voyages and discourses in this first part.
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HAuing for the benefit and honour of my Countrey zealously bestowed so many yeres, so much traueile and cost, to bring Antiquities smothered and buried in darke silence, to light, and to preserue certaine memorable exploits of late yeeres by our English nation atchieued, from the greedy and deuouring iawes of obliuion: to gather likewise, and as it were to incorporate into one body the torne and scattered limmes of our ancient and late Nauigations by Sea, our voyages by land, and traffiques of merchandise by both: and hauing (so much as in me lieth) restored ech particular member, being before displaced, to their true ioynts 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 vnto 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 haue indured; how many long & chargeable iourneys I haue traueiled; how many famous libraries I haue searched into; what varietie of ancient and moderne writers I haue perused; what a number of old records, patents, priuileges, letters, &c. I haue redeemed from obscuritie and perishing; into how manifold acquaintance I haue entred; what expenses I haue not spared; and yet what faire opportunities of priuate gaine, preferment, and ease I haue neglected; albeit thy selfe canst hardly imagine, yet I by daily experience do finde & feele, and some of my entier friends can sufficiently testifie. Howbeit (as I told thee at the first) the honour and benefit of this Common weale wherein I liue and breathe, hath made all difficulties seeme easie, all paines and industrie pleasant, and all expenses of light value and moment vnto me.
For (to conteine my selfe onely within the bounds of this present discourse, and in the midst thereof to begin) wil it not in all posteritie be as great a renowme vnto our English nation, to haue bene the first discouerers of a Sea beyond the North cape (neuer certainly knowen before) and of a conuenient passage into the huge Empire of Russia by the bay of S. Nicolas and the riuer of Duina; as for the Portugales to haue found a Sea beyond the Cape of Buona Esperanza, and so consequently a passage by Sea into the East Indies; or for the Italians and Spaniards to haue discouered vnknowen landes so many hundred leagues Westward and Southwestward of the streits of Gibraltar, & of the pillers of Hercules? Be it granted that the renowmed Portugale Vasquez de Gama trauersed the maine Ocean Southward of Africke: Did not Richard Chanceler and his mates performe the like Northward of Europe? Suppose that Columbus that noble and high-spirited Genuois escried vnknowen landes to the Westward of Europe and Africke: Did not the valiant English knight sir Hugh Willoughby; did not the famous Pilots Stephen Burrough, Arthur Pet, and Charles Iackman accoast Noua Zembla, Colgoieue, and Vaigatz to the North of Europe and Asia? Howbeit you will say perhaps, not with the like golden successe, not with such deductions of Colonies, nor attaining of conquests. True it is, that our successe hath not bene correspondent vnto theirs: yet in this our attempt the vncertaintie of finding was farre greater, and the difficultie and danger of searching was no whit lesse. For hath not Herodotus (a man for his time, most skilfull and iudicial in Cosmographie, who writ aboue 2000. yeeres ago) in his 4. booke called Mel-pomene,
