and when it was ten of the clock, the heat being extreme, they came to a rock near the wood side (for all this country is nothing but thick woods), and there they boiled Casavi roots and dined. After dinner some slept, some washed themselves in the sea, all being stripped to their shirts, and no man keeping watch, no match lighted, not a piece charged. Suddenly, as they were thus sleeping and sporting, having gotten themselves into a corner out of sight of the ship, there came a multitude of Indians and Portugals upon them, and slew them sleeping. Only two escaped, one very sore hurt, the other not touched, by whom we understood of this miserable massacre. With all speed we manned our boat, and landed to succour our men; but we found them slain, and laid naked on a rank, one by another, with their faces upward, and a cross set by them. And withal we saw two very great pinnaces come from the river of Jenero very full of men; whom we mistrusted came from thence to take us; because there came from Jenero soldiers to Santos when the General had taken the town, and was strong in it. Of seventy-six persons which departed in our ship out of England, we were now left but twenty-seven, having lost thirteen in this place, with their chief furniture, as muskets, calivers, powder, and shot. Our cask was all in decay, so that we could not take in more water than was in our ship, for want of cask, and that which we had was marvellous illconditioned. And being there moored by trees for want of cables and anchors, we still expected the cutting of our moorings, to be beaten from our decks with our own furniture, and to be assailed by them of Jenero: what distress we were now driven into I am not able to express. To depart with eight tons of water in such bad cask was to starve at sea, and in staying our case was ruinous. These were hard choices; but being thus perplexed, we made choice rather to fall into the hands of the Lord than into the hands of men: for His exceeding mercies we had tasted, and Jane 1593 Jane 1593 of the others' cruelty we were not ignorant. So concluding to depart, the sixth of February we were off in the channel, with our ordnance and small shot in a readiness for any assault that should come, and having a small gale of wind, we recovered the sea in most deep distress. Then bemoaning our estate one to another, and recounting over all our extremities, nothing grieved us more than the loss of our men twice, first by the slaughter of the cannibals at Port Desire, and at this Isle of Placencia by the Indians and Portugals. And considering what they were that were lost, we found that all those that conspired the murthering of our Captain and Master were now slain by savages, the Gunner only excepted. Being thus at sea, when we came to Cape Frio the wind was contrary; so that three weeks we were grievously vexed with cross winds, and our water consuming, our hope of life was very small. Some desired to go to Baya, and to submit themselves to the Portugals, rather than to die for thirst: but the Captain with fair persuasions altered their purpose of yielding to the Portugals. In this distress it pleased God to send us rain in such plenty, as that we were well watered, and in good comfort to return. But after we came near unto the sun our dried penguins began to corrupt, and there bred in them a most loathsome and ugly worm of an inch long. This worm did so mightily increase, and devour our victuals, that there was in reason no hope how we should avoid famine, but be devoured of these wicked creatures. There was nothing that they did not devour, only iron excepted: our clothes, boots, shoes, hats, shirts, stockings: and for the ship, they did so eat the timbers, as that we greatly feared they would undo us by gnawing through the ship's side. Great was the care and diligence of our Captain, Master, and company to consume these vermin; but the more we laboured to kill them, the more they increased; so that at the last we could not sleep for them, but they would eat our flesh and bite like mosquitoes. In this woful case, after we had passed the equinoctial toward the North, our men began to fall sick of such a monstrous disease as I think the like was never heard of: for in their ankles it began to swell; from thence in two days it would be in their breasts, so that they could not draw their breath, and then . . . . so that they could neither stand, lie, nor go. Whereupon our men grew mad with grief. Our Captain, with extreme anguish of his soul, was in such woful case that he desired only a speedy end, and though he were scarce able to speak for sorrow, yet he persuaded them to patience, and to give God thanks, and like dutiful children to accept of His chastisement. For all this divers grew raging mad, and some died in most loathsome and furious pain. It were incredible to write our misery as it was: there was no man in perfect health but the Captain and one boy. The Master, being a man of good spirit, with extreme labour bore out his grief, so that it grew not upon him. To be short, all our men died except sixteen, of which there were but five able to move. The Captain was in good health, the Master indifferent, Captain Cotton and myself swollen and short winded, yet better than the rest that were sick, and one boy in health: upon us five only the labour of the ship did stand. The Captain and Master, as occasion served, would take in and heave out the topsails, the Master only attended on the spritsail, and all of us at the capstan without sheets and tacks. In fine our misery and weakness was so great that we could not take in nor heave out a sail: so our topsail and spritsails were torn all in pieces by the weather. The Master and Captain taking their turns at the helm, were mightily distressed and monstrously grieved with the most woful lamentation of our sick men. Thus, as lost wanderers upon the sea, the eleventh of June 1593, it pleased God that we arrived at Bearhaven in Ireland, and there ran the ship on shore; where the Irishmen Jane 1593 Jane 1593 : helped us to take in our sails and to moor our ship for floating which slender pains of theirs cost the Captain some ten pounds before he could have the ship in safety. Thus without victuals, sails, men, or any furniture, God only guided us into Ireland, where the Captain left the Master and three or four of the company to keep the ship; and within five days after he and certain others had passage in an English fisher-boat to Padstow in Cornwall. In this manner our small remnant by God's only mercy were preserved and restored to our country, to whom be all honour and glory, world without end. Hakluyt: Navigations. Nash 1594 BER THE DIVINE ARETINE EFORE I go any further, let me speak a word or two of this Aretine. It was one of the wittiest knaves that ever God made. If out of so base a thing as ink there may be extracted a spirit, he writ with nought but the spirit of ink, and his style was the spirituality of art's, and nothing else, whereas all others of his age were but the lay temporality of inkhorn terms. For indeed they were mere temporisers, and no better. His pen was sharp pointed like [a] poniard. No leaf he wrote on but was like a burning glass to set on fire all his readers. With more than musket shot did he charge his quill, where he meant to inveigh. No one hour but he sent a whole legion of devils into some herd of swine or other. If Martiall had ten Muses (as he saith of himself) when he but tasted a cup of wine, he had ten score when he determined to tyrannise. Ne'er a line of his but was able to make a man drunken with admiration. His sight pierced like lightning into the entrails of all abuses. This I must needs say, that most of his learning he got by hearing the lectures at Florence. It is sufficient that learning he had, and a conceit exceeding all learning, to quintessence everything which he heard. He was no timorous servile flatterer of the commonwealth wherein he lived. His tongue and his invention were foreborne, what they thought they would confidently utter. Princes he spared not, that in the least point transgressed. His life he contemned in comparison of the liberty of speech. Thomas Nash. Nash 1594 A DISCOVERING GUIANA FTER we departed from the port of these Ciawani, we Raleigh passed up the river with the flood, and anchored the 1596 ebb, and in this sort we went onward. The third day that we entered the river our galley came on ground, and stuck so fast as we thought that even there our discovery had ended, and that we must have left sixty of our men to have inhabited like rooks upon trees with those nations: but the next morning, after we had cast out all her ballast, with tugging and hauling to and fro, we got her afloat, and went on. At four days' end we fell into as goodly a river as ever I beheld, which was called the great Amana, which ran more directly without windings and turnings than the other. But soon after the flood of the sea left us, and we enforced either by main strength to row against a violent current, or to return as wise as we went out; we had then no shift but to persuade the companies that it was but two or three days' work, and therefore desired them to take pains, every gentleman and others taking their turns to row, and to spell one the other at the hour's end. Every day we passed by goodly branches of rivers, some falling from the West, others from the East into Amana, but those I leave to the description in the chart of discovery, where every one shall be named, with |