The particular commodities whereof are wel knowen vnto your selfe and some few others, and are faithfully and with great iudgement committed to writing, as you are not ignorant, by one of your followers, which remained [pg 404] there about a tweluemonth with your worshipful Lieutenant M. Ralph Lane, in the diligent search of the secrets of those Countreys. Touching the speedy and effectual pursuing of your action, though I wrote well it would demaund a princes purse to haue it throughly followed without lingering, yet am I of opinion, that you shall drawe the same before it be long to be profitable and gainful aswel to those of our nation there remaining, as to the merchants of England that shall trade hereafter thither, partly by certaine secret commodities already discouered by your seruants, and partly by breeding of diuers sorts of beasts in those large and ample regions, and planting of such things in that warme climat as wil best prosper there, and our realme standeth most in need of.
Meanes to raise benefit in new discoueries vsed by the Spaniards and Portugals.
And this I find to haue bin the course that both the Spaniards and Portugals tooke in the beginnings of their discoueries and conquests.
Kine, sugar-canes and ginger transported into Hispaniola and Madera &c.
For the Spaniards at their first entrance into Hispaniola found neither sugercanes nor ginger, growing there, nor any kind of our cattell: But finding the place fit for pasture they sent kine and buls and sundry sorts of other profitable beastes thither, and transported the plants of suger canes, and set the rootes of ginger: the hides of which oxen, with suger and ginger, are now the chiefe merchandise of that Island. The Portugals also at their first footing in Madera, as Iohn Barros writes in his first Decade, found nothing there but mighty woods for timber, whereupon they called the Island by that name. Howbeit the climate being fauourable, they inriched it by their own industry with the best wines and sugers in the world.
Woad and vines planted in the Azores.
The like maner of proceeding they vsed in the Isles of Açores by sowing therin great quantity of Woad. So dealt they in S. Thomas vnder the Equinoctial, and in Brasil and sundry other places. And if our men will follow their steps, by your wise direction I doubt not but that in due time they shall reape no lesse commodity and benefite. Moreouer there is none other likelihood but that her Maiesty, which hath Christned, and giuen the name to your Virginia if need require, will deale after the maner of honourable godmothers, which, seeing their gossips not fully able to bring vp their children themselues, are wont to contribute to their honest education, the rather if they find any towardlines or reasonable hope of goodnesse in them. And if Elizabeth Queene of Castile [pg 405] and Aragon,[114] after her husband Ferdinando and she had emptied their cofers and exhausted their treasures in subduing the kingdome of Granada and rooting the Mores, a wicked weed, out of Spaine, was neuerthelesse so zealous of Gods honour, that (as Fernandus Columbus the son of Christopher Columbus recordeth in the history of the deedes of his father) she layd part of her owne iewels, which she had in great account, to gage, to furnish his father foorth vpon his first voyage, before any foot of land of all the West Indies was discouered; what may we expect of our most, magnificent and gracious prince ELIZABETH of England, into whose lappe the Lord hath most plentifully throwne his treasures, what may wee, I say, hope of her forwardnesse and bounty in aduancing of this your most honourable enterprise, being farre more certaine then that of Columbus, at that time especially, and tending no lesse to the glorie of God then that action of the Spanyardes?
The aptnesse of the people in the maine of Virginia to embrace Christianitie. Seneca.
For as you may read in the very last wordes of the relation of Newe Mexico extant nowe in English, the maine land, where your last Colonie meane to seate themselues, is replenished with many thousands of Indians, Which are of better wittes then those of Mexico and Peru, as hath bene found by those that haue had some triall of them: whereby it may bee gathered that they will easily embrace the Gospell, forsaking their idolatrie, wherein at this present for the most part they are wrapped and intangled. A wise Philosopher noting the sundry desires of diuers men, writeth, that if an oxe bee put into a medowe hee will seeke to fill his bellie with grasse, if a Storke bee cast in shee will seeke for Snakes, if you turne in a Hound he will seeke to start a Hare: So sundry men entering into these discoueries propose vnto themselues seuerall endes. Some seeke authoritie and places of commandement, others experience by seeing of the worlde, the most part wordly and transitorie gaine, and that often times by dishonest and vnlawfull meanes, the fewest number the glorie of God and, the sauing of the soules of the poore and blinded infidels.
2 Cor. 12. 14.