Here The People Of The Country
Came To Us, Being Cloathed In Furs, With The Hair Side Inwards, And
Brought
With them sundry sorts of furs to sell, together with great
quantities of wild ducks; and as some of our
Company had saved a few
small beads, we bought a few of their ducks. We staid only about four
hours at this place, which seemed a very good country, as we saw very
fine champaign ground and woods. We ran from this place to the Banks of
Newfoundland, where we met several vessels, none of which would take us
in. At length, by the blessing of God, we fell in with a bark belonging
to Falmouth, which received us all for a short time; and in her we
overtook a French ship, in which I left my dear friend, Captain de la
Barbotiere, and all his company, remaining myself in the English bark,
in which I arrived at Falmouth in August, 1594.
SECTION VIII.
The unfortunate Voyage of Captain Benjamin Wood, towards the East
Indies, in 1596.[29]
INTRODUCTION.
In the year 1596, a squadron of three ships, the Bear, Bear's Welp, and
Benjamin, was fitted out, chiefly at the charges of Sir Robert Dudley,
and the command given to Mr Benjamin Wood. The merchants employed in
this voyage were, Mr Richard Allot and Mr Thomas Bromfield, both of the
city of London. As they intended to have proceeded as far as China, they
obtained the gracious letters of Queen Elizabeth, of famous memory, to
the king or emperor of that country, recommending these two merchants,
or factors, to his protection.
[Footnote 29: Purchas his Pilgrims, I. 110, Astl. I. 252.]
This their honourable expedition, and gracious recommendations from her
majesty for the furtherance of their mercantile affairs, had no
answerable effects, but suffered a double disaster: first, in the
miserable perishing of the squadron; and next, in losing the history, or
relation, of that tragedy. Some broken plank, however, as after a
shipwreck have yet been encountered from the West Indies, which gives us
some notice of this East-Indian misadventure. Having the following
intelligence by the intercepted letters of the licentiate Alcasar de
Villa Senor, auditor in the royal audience of St Domingo, judge of the
commission in Porto Rico, and captain-general of the province of New
Andalusia, written to the King of Spain and his royal council of the
Indies; an extract of which, so far as concerns this business, here
follows; wherein let not the imputation of robbery and piracy trouble
the minds of the reader, being the words of a Spaniard concerning the
deeds of Englishmen, done in the time of war between us and them.
So far we have exactly followed the introductory remarks of Purchas. In
the sequel, however, we have thought it better to give only an
abridgement of the letter from Alcasar de Villa Senor, which Purchas
informs us, in a side note, he had found among the papers of Mr Richard
Hakluyt.
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