[This cut follows a photograph of the bas-relief which is given in the Hakluyt Society’s edition of the Hawkins Voyages. Another engraving of it is given in Harper’s Magazine, January, 1883, p. 221.—Ed.]
His account of Florida is much more careful than what he gives of any of the West India Islands. From his own words it is clear that he thought it might be of use to England, and that he wanted to draw attention to it as a place open to colonization. Like so many other explorers, from Ponce de Leon down to our own times, he was surprised that a country, which is so attractive to the eye, should be left so nearly without inhabitants. It seems to have been more densely peopled when Ponce de Leon landed there in 1513 than it was at the beginning of this century. To such interest or enthusiasm of Hawkins do we owe an account of Florida, in its native condition, more full than we have of any other of our States, excepting New Mexico, at a period so early in our history.
Besides tobacco, he specifies the abundance of sorrel,—which grew as abundantly as grass,—of maize, of mill, and of grapes, which “taste much like our English grapes.” He describes the community building of the southern tribes, as made “like a great barne, in strength not inferiour to ours,” with stanchions and rafters of whole trees, and covered with palmetto leaves. There was one small room for the king and queen, but no other subdivisions. In the midst of the great hall a fire was kept all night. The houses, indeed, were only used at night.
In a country of such a climate and soil, with “marvellous store of deer and divers other beasts, and fowl and fish sufficient,” Hawkins naturally thought that “a man might live,” as he says quaintly. Maize, he says, “maketh good savory bread, and cakes as fine as flower.” The first account to be found in English literature of the “hasty pudding” of the American larder, the “mush” of the Pennsylvanians,[139] is in Hawkins’s narrative. “It maketh good meal, beaten, and sodden with water, and eateth like pap wherewith we feed children.” The Frenchmen, fond by nature of soup, had made another use of it, not wholly forgotten at this day. “It maketh also good beverage, sodden in water and nourishable; which the Frenchmen did use to drink of in the morning, and it assuaged their thirst so that they had no need to drink all the day after.” It was, he says, because the French had been too lazy to plant maize for themselves that their colony came to such wretched destitution. To obtain maize, they had made war against the so-called savages who had raised it, and this aggression had naturally reacted against them.
It is interesting to observe that in all these early narratives of the slave-trade there is no intimation that it involved cruelty or any form of wrong. Hawkins sailed in the ship “Jesus,” with faith as sincere as if he had sailed on a crusade. His sailing orders to his four ships close with words which remind one of Cromwell: “Serve God daily; love one another; preserve your victuals; beware of fire; and keep good company.” By “serve God,” it is meant that the ship’s company shall join in religious services morning and evening; and this these slave-traders regularly did. In one of their incursions on the Guinea coast they were almost destroyed by the native negroes, as they well deserved to be. Hawkins narrates the adventure with this comment: “God, who worketh all things for the best, would not have it so, and by him we escaped without danger. His name be praised for it!” And again, when they were nearly starved, becalmed in mid-ocean: “Almighty God, who never suffereth his elect to perish, sent us the ordinary breeze.”[140]
The success of the second voyage was such that a coat-of-arms was granted to Hawkins. Translated from the jargon of heraldry, the grant means that he might bear on his black shield a golden lion walking over the waves. Above the lion were three golden coins. For a crest he was to have a figure of half a Moor, “bound, and a captive,” with golden amulets on his arms and ears. No disgrace attached to the capturing of Africans and selling them for money. That the Heralds’ Office might give to the transaction the sanctions of Christianity, it directed Hawkins, five years after, to add in one corner of the shield the pilgrim’s scallop-shell in gold, between two palmer’s staves, as if to intimate that the African slave-trade was the true crusade of the reign of Elizabeth.
So successful was this expedition, that Hawkins started on a third, with five ships, in October, 1567. He commanded his old ship, the “Jesus,” and Francis Drake, afterward so celebrated, commanded the “Judith,” a little vessel of fifty tons. They took four or five hundred negroes, and crossed to Dominica again, but were more than seven weeks on the passage. As before, they passed along the Spanish main, where they found the Spaniards had been cautioned against them. They absolutely stormed the town of Rio de la Hacha before they could obtain permission to trade. In all cases, although the Spanish officers had been instructed to oppose their trade, they found that negroes were so much in demand that the planters dealt with them eagerly. After a repulse at Cartagena, they crossed the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida, but were finally compelled, by two severe tempests, to run to San Juan d’ Ulua, the port of Mexico, for repairs and supplies. Here they claimed the privileges of allies of King Philip, and were at first well enough received. Hawkins takes to himself credit that he did not seize twelve ships which he found there, with, £200,000 of silver on board. The local officers sent to the City of Mexico, about two hundred miles inland, for instructions. The next day a fleet from Spain, of twelve ships, arrived in the offing. Hawkins, fearing the anger of his Queen, he says, let them come into harbor, having made a compact with the Government that neither side should make war against the other. The fleet entered, and for three days all was amity and courtesy. But on the fourth day, from the shore and from the ships, the five English vessels were attacked furiously, and in that little harbor a naval action ensued, of which the result was the flight of the “Minion” and the “Judith” alone, and the capture or destruction of the other English vessels. So crowded was the “Minion,” that a hundred of the fugitives preferred to land, rather than to tempt the perils of the sea in her. They fell into the hands of the Inquisition, and their sufferings were horrible. The others, after a long and stormy passage, arrived in England on the 25th of January, 1568/69.
It is a real misfortune for our early history that no reliance can be placed on the fragmentary stories of the few survivors who were left by Hawkins on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. One or two there were who, after years of captivity, told their wretched story at home. But it is so disfigured by every form of lie, that the most ingenious reconstructer of history fails to distil from it even a drop of the truth. The routes which they pursued cannot be traced, the etymology of geography gains nothing from their nomenclature, and, in a word, the whole story has to be consigned to the realm of fable.[141] Such a narrative as these men might have told would be our best guide for what has been well called by Mr. Haven “the mythical century” of American history.
In this voyage of Hawkins the Earls of Pembroke and of Leicester were among the adventurers.