RICHARD HAKLUYT, PREACHER,
and Editied by
Edmund Goldsmid, F.R.H.S
VOL. III.
NORTH-EASTERN EUROPE AND ADJACENT COUNTRIES.
PART II.
THE MUSCOVY COMPANY AND THE NORTH-EASTERN PASSAGE.
Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries
IN NORTH-EASTERN EUROPE.
A briefe Treatise of the great Duke of Moscouia his genealogie, being taken
out of the Moscouites manuscript Chronicles written by a Polacke.
It hath almost euer bene the custome of nations, in searching out the
infancie and first beginnings of their estate, to ascribe the same vnto
such authors as liued among men in great honour and endued mankinde with
some one or other excellent benefite. Nowe, this inbred desire of all
nations to blaze and set foorth their owne petigree hath so much preuayled
with the greater part, that leauing the vndoubted trueth, they haue betaken
themselues vnto meere fables and fictions. Yea and the Chronicles of many
nations written in diuers and sundrie ages doe testifie the same. Euen so
the Grecians boasted that they were either Autocthones, that is
earthbredde, or els lineally descended from the Gods. And the Romans
affirme that Mars was father vnto their first founder Romulus. Right well
therefore and iudicially sayth Titus Liuius: Neither meane I to auouch
(quoth he) ne to disable or confute those thinges which before the building
and foundation of the Citie haue beene reported, being more adorned and
fraught with Poeticall fables then with incorrupt and sacred monuments of
trueth:
