They Are Written Out In A Clear
And Excellent Handwriting, Showing The Writer To Have Been A Person Of Good
Education, Who Had Also Travelled In Turkey And Italy, And Who Had Been In
London, And Perhaps Learned His English There In His Early Life.
The
narrative of travels between the years 1652 and 1664 was for some time the
property of Samuel Pepys, the well-known diarist, and Secretary of the
Admiralty to Charles II.
And James II. He probably received it from Sir
George Cartaret, the Vice-Chamberlain of the King and Treasurer of the
Navy, for whom it was no doubt carefully copied out from his rough notes by
the author, So that it might, through him, be brought under the notice of
Charles II. Some years after the death of Pepys, in 1703, his collection of
manuscripts was dispersed and fell into the hands of various London
tradesmen, who bought parcels of it to use in their shops as waste-paper.
The most valuable portions were carefully reclaimed by the celebrated
collector, Richard Rawlinson, who in writing to his friend T. Rawlins,
from. "London house, January 25th, 1749/50," says: "I have purchased the
best part of the fine collection of Mr Pepys, Secretary to the Admiralty
during the reigns of Charles 2d and James 2d. Some are as old as King Henry
VIII. They were collected with a design for a Lord High Admiral such as he
should approve; but those times are not yet come, and so little care was
taken of them that they were redeemed from thus et adores vendentibus."
The manuscript containing Radisson's narrative for the years 1682 and 1683
was "purchased of Rodd, 8th July, 1839," by the British Museum. The
narrative in French, for the year 1684, was bought by Sir Hans Sloane from
the collection of "Nicolai Joseph Foucault, Comitis Consistoriani," as his
bookplate informs us. With the manuscript this gentleman had bound up in
the same volume a religious treatise in manuscript, highly illuminated, in
Italian, relating to some of the saints of the Catholic Church. [Footnote:
I am under obligations to Mr. John Gilmary Shea for valuable information.]
VOYAGES
OF
PETER ESPRIT RADISSON.
The Relation of my Voyage, being in Bondage in the Lands of the Irokoits,
which was the next yeare after my coming into Canada, in the yeare 1651,
the 24th day of May.
Being persuaded in the morning by two of my comrades to go and recreat
ourselves in fowling, I disposed myselfe to keepe them Company; wherfor I
cloathed myselfe the lightest way I could possible, that I might be the
nimbler and not stay behinde, as much for the prey that I hoped for, as for
to escape the danger into which wee have ventered ourselves of an enemy the
cruelest that ever was uppon the face of the Earth. It is to bee observed
that the french had warre with a wild nation called Iroquoites, who for
that time weare soe strong and so to be feared that scarce any body durst
stirre out either Cottage or house without being taken or kill'd,
[Footnote:
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