Northern Europe - The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques And Discoveries Of The English Nation - Volume 1 - Collected By Richard Hakluyt
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But To Leaue Our Ancient Shipping, And Descend Vnto Later Times, I Thinke
That Neuer Was Any Nation Blessed Of IEHOVAH, With A More Glorious And
Wonderfull Victory Vpon The Seas, Then Our Vanquishing Of The Dreadfull
Spanish Armada, 1588.
But why should I presume to call it our vanquishing;
when as the greatest part of them escaped vs, and were onely by Gods
out-stretched arme ouerwhelmed in the Seas, dashed in pieces against the
Rockes, and made fearefull spectacles and examples of his iudgements vnto
all Christendome.
An excellent discourse whereof, as likewise of the
honourable expedition vnder two of the most noble and valiant peeres of
this Realme, I meane the renoumed Erle of Essex, and the right honorable
the lord Charles Howard, lord high Admirall of England, made 1596. vnto the
strong citie of Cadiz, I haue set downe as a double epiphonema to conclude
this my first volume withall. Both of which, albeit they ought of right to
haue bene placed among the Southerne voyages of our nation, yet partly to
satisfie the importunitie of some of my special friends, and partly, not
longer to depriue the diligent Reader of two such woorthy and long expected
discourses, I haue made bold to straine a litle curtesie with that methode
which I first propounded vnto my selfe.
And here had I almost forgotten to put the Reader in mind of that learned
and Philosophical treatise of the true state of Iseland, and so
consequently of the Northren Seas & regions lying that way, wherein a great
number of none of the meanest Historiographers and Cosmographers of later
times, as namely, Munster, Gemma Frisius, Zieglerus, Krantzius, Saxo
Grammaticus, Olaus Magnus, Peucerus and others, are by euident arguments
conuinced of manifold errors, that is to say, as touching the true
situation and Northerly latitude of that Island, and of the distance
thereof from other places, touching the length of dayes in Sommer and of
nights in Winter, of the temperature of the land and sea, of the time and
maner of the congealing, continuance, and thawing of the Ice in those Seas,
of the first Discouerie and inhabiting of that Island, of the first
planting of Christianitie there, as likewise of the continuall flaming of
mountains, strange qualities of fountaines, of hel-mouth, and of purgatorie
which those authors haue fondly written and imagined to be there.
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