Volume 2

An English garner ... / [Rearranged and classified under the general editorial supervision of Mr. Thomas Seccombe].

Date:
1903-1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: An English garner ... / [Rearranged and classified under the general editorial supervision of Mr. Thomas Seccombe]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/480 (page 13)
    The notes of Paladanus, both in and out of the text, are omitted in the present reprint, which also abridges the text in many places,^ and omits practically the whole of Linschoten^s lengthy description of Indian lands, manners, markets, products, peoples, fauna and flora, extending from chapter v. to chapter xcii.,from vol. i. p. 43 to vol. ii. p. 158 in the Hakluyt Society’s edition of the complete Old English translation (1596-1885 ; see pp. 1-126 of this volume).^ Passing by the next two tracts, both relating to the destruction of Spanish and Portuguese Carracks in 1592-4 by English seamen (see vol. ii. pp. 129-150), we come to the Miserable Captivity of Richard Hasleton (pp. 151-180), originally printed in 1595, under the title Strange and Wonderful Things happened to Rd, Hasleton^ born at Braintree in Essex^ in his ten years' travels in many foreign countries. This is illustrated by various cuts, said to be taken from Poliphilo. The scene on p. 157, where Hasleton, urged to take the cross into his hand, spits in the inquisitor’s face, is very typical; not less so is the protest on p. 168, ‘Can any man which understandeth the absurd blindness and wilful ignorance of the Spanish tyrants, or Romish monsters, think them to be of the true Church ? which de- fend their faith with fire, sword, and hellish torments.’... In ^ E.g. pp. 3, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, vol. ii. of the present collection. ^ Much has been written, and more conjectured, about early Portuguese knowledge of the interior of Africa, the great lakes, the Nile sources, etc. A valuable hint as to this is afforded by a passage in Linschoten, Hak. Soc. edn., i. 31 ; this is omitted in our present reprint, but properly occurs after the words mine named Mononiotapa on p. 17 of vol. ii. : ‘ in the which land is a great lake out of which you may perceive the river Nilus to spring forth, as likewise the great and wide river of Cuama or Niger [Quilimane? i.e. Zambesi], which runneth between Sofala and Mozambique into the sea. This, taken in connec- tion with the Pigafetta map of 1591, may well be thought to prove a remarkable though unsifted and often vague knowledge of Upland Africa among the six- teenth century Portuguese.