The prefatory address “to the Favourable Reader” discloses the thoroughness of the compiler’s work. He has been careful in every possible case to present exact copies of the original narratives. Wherever he has copied from an historian, or “authour of authoritie,” either “stranger or naturall”—foreigner or native—he has “recorded the same word for word with his particular name and page of booke” where the “testimonie” is extant. “If the same were not reduced into our common language,” he has given it in the original followed by a translation. And “to the ende that those men which were the paynefull and personall travellers might reape that good opinion and iust [just] commendation which they haue deserued, and further, that euery man might answere for himselfe, iustifie [justify] his reports, and stand accountable for his own doings,” he has “referred euery voyage to his Author which both in person hath performed, and in writing hath left the same.” He adds that while he “meddles” in this work with the navigations only of the English nation he quotes in a few places “some strangers as witnesses of the things done”; yet these foreigners are only such as “either faythfully remember, or sufficiently confirme” the Englishmen’s travels.

A map of the world inserted in this volume was taken by Hakluyt from the atlas of Abraham Ortelius, a celebrated Flemish geographer, published at Antwerp in 1570. It was substituted temporarily for one in preparation for the book, but not completed by the engraver in time. Hakluyt alludes to this, in the address “to the Favourable Reader,” as “a very large and most exact terrestriall Globe collected and reformed according to the newest, secretest, and latest discoveries, both Spanish, Portugall, and English, composed by M[aster] Emmerie Mollineux of Lambeth, a rare gentleman in his profession, being therein for divers yeares, greatly supported by the purse and liberalitie of the worshipfull marchant M[aster] William Sanderson.” What is supposed to be the Mollineux map has been found in rare copies of this volume and of the second edition. A map bound in a treasured copy of the 1589 edition in the Boston Public Library contains this memorandum written on the back: "This map is a facsimile of the map of the world found in some of the first editions of this book. By Sabin and others it is attributed to Emmerie Mollineux of Lambeth, by Capt. Markham and others, to Edward Wright, the mathematician who perfected and rendered practicable what we know to-day as Mercator’s projection. Hallam describes this as ‘the best map of the 16th century and one of uncommon rarity.’ Only nine copies are known to exist."

Professor Walter Raleigh, in his essay on the English Voyages which accompanies the modern reprint of the Navigations (Glasgow, 1903), recalls the belief of Shaksperian authorities, among whom he is counted, that this is the map alluded to in Twelfth Night in the passage (Act III, Scene II), “He does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies.”

The titles of the three-volumed second edition set forth the contents of each book with the same minute detail as that of the initial volume of 1589.

IV
THE EARLY VOYAGES

The English voyages begin with the adventures by the Britons northward in the sixth century for conquest. So Hakluyt places in the forefront of the Principal Navigations legendary accounts of the travels of British and Saxon kings. First are reproduced from ancient chronicles records of “the noble actes of Arthur and Malgo,” in the years 517 and 580, respectively, Arthur, after having “subdued all parts of Ireland,” sailing to “Island” (Iceland) and “the most northeast parts of Europe”; and Malgo into the North seas, recovering to his empire the “six islands of the Ocean sea, which before had been made tributaries by King Arthur, namely, Ireland, Island, Gotland, Orkney, Norway, and Denmark.”

Next follow fragmentary narratives of seventh-century voyages. Two “testimonies” are given of the exploits of the Saxon king, Edwin, with his conquest of the Isles of Man and Anglesey and the other northwestern islands of the Britons lying between Britain and Ireland, in the year 624. The second of these “testimonies” related how Edwin also subdued to the crown of England the Hebrides, “commonly called the Western Islands.” Then is reproduced the story of the voyage of Bertus, “general of an army sent into Ireland by Ecfridus [Ecgfrith] king of Northumberland” in the year 684. This warrior, the chronicler relates, “miserably wasted that innocent nation being always most friendly unto the people of England,” sparing neither churches nor monasteries, while the Islanders “repelled arms with arms and craving God’s aid from heaven with continual imprecations and curses they pleaded for revenge.”

The first recorded English voyage having discovery with expansion of trade for its object was that of one Octher to the northward, at the close of the ninth century, about the year 890. Octher was a prosperous whale-hunter, of Heligoland in the North Sea. The special purpose of his venture was to “increase the knowledge” of the northern coasts and countries “for the more commodity of fishing of horse-whales which have in their teeth bones of great price and excellence.” He found what he sought, and brought home some specimens of big whalebones, which he presented to the English king. The skins of the horse-whales he reported were “very good to make cables for ships, and so used” by the hardy dwellers on these coasts. A few years earlier Sighelmus, Bishop of Sheburne, as messenger of King “Alphred” (Ælfrid), bearing alms and gifts to the king of Rome, had penetrated into India, and returned to England with costly spices and divers strange and precious stones, many of which stones long after remained in the monuments of the church. Following Octher one Wolstan made a navigation into the sound of Denmark, of which brief account is given.

With these narrations of voyages for conquest and trade are interwoven tales of pilgrimages to the Holy Land, “for devotion’s sake,” and imagined relief from the penalties of sin, forerunners of the Crusades of succeeding centuries. Earliest of all chronicled is the legend of the “Travaile of Helena,” in the fourth century, before 337. She was Helena Flavia Augusta, afterward the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine “the Great,” emperor and king of Britain. She became a Christian when Constantine was converted. By reason of her “singular beauty, faith, religion, goodness, and godly majesty,” she was “famous in all the world.” She was “skilful in divinity,” and wrote and composed “divers books and certain Greek verses.” She made the perilous journey to Jerusalem toward the close of a long life, being “warned by some visions,” and piously visited “all the places that Christ had frequented.” She is said to have discovered “the holy sepulchre and the true cross.” Then follows a note on Constantine’s travels to Greece, Egypt, and Persia, in about 339. He “overthrew the false gods of the heathen, and by many laws, often revived, he abrogated the worshipping of images in all the countries of Greece, Egypt, Persia, Asia, and the whole Roman empire, commanding Christ only to be worshipped.”

In the tenth century English ships began to be found in far distant seas. Fragments are recorded concerning the beginnings and growth of the “classical and warlike” shipping of England in that period. We have the spectacle of the grand navy of the Saxon Eadgar, “the Peaceful,” who succeeded to the whole realm in 959, comprising “four thousand sail at the least.” With this fleet it was his annual pastime to make “summer progresses” round almost the whole of his then large monarchy, thus demonstrating “to the world” that “as he wisely knew the ancient bounds and limits of the British empire” so he “could and would royally, justly, and triumphantly enjoy the same spite the devil and maugre the force of any foreign potentate.” By the twelfth century London, as described in extracts from a foreign writer, had become a “noble Citie,” frequented with the “traffique of Marchants resorting thither out of all nations,” and having “outlandish wares ... conveighed” into it from the “famous river of the Thames.” At the same time, and by the same writer, the “famous Towne of Bristow” (Bristol) is represented “with an Haven belonging thereunto which is a commodious and safe receptacle for all ships directing their course for the same from Ireland, Norway, and other outlandish and foren [foreign] countreys.”