res, kingdoms, dukedoms, and territories of each part, with
declaration also of their speciall commodities, and particular wants,
which by the benefit of traffike, and intercourse of merchants, are
plentifully supplied.

From the mappe he brought me to the Bible, and turning to the 107th
Psalme, directed me to the 23rd and 24th verses, where I read that "they
which go downe to the sea in ships, and occupy by the great waters, they
see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deepe," etc.

Which words of the prophet together with my cousin's discourse (things
of high and rare delight to my young nature), tooke in me so deepe an
impression that I constantly resolved, if ever I were preferred to the
university, where better time, and more convenient place might be
ministered for these studies, I would, by God's assistance, prosecute
that knowledge and kinde of literature, the doores whereof were so
happily opened before me.

According to which my resolution when, not long after, I was removed to
Christ Church in Oxford, my exercises of duty first performed, I fell to
my intended course, and by degrees read over whatsoever printed or
written discoveries and voyages I found extant, either in the Greeke,
Latine, Italian, Spanish, Portugall, French, or English languages. In
continuance of time I grew familiarly acquainted with the chiefest
captaines at sea, the gretest merchants, and the best mariners of our
nation, by which means having gotten somewhat more than common
knowledge.

I passed at length the narrow seas into France. There I both heard in
speech and read in books other nations miraculously extolled for their
discoveries and notable enterprises by sea, but the English, of all
others, for their sluggish security and continuall neglect of the like
attempts, either ignominiously reported or exceedingly condemned. Thus,
both hearing and reading the obluquie of our nation, and finding few or
none of our owne men able to replie heerin, and further, not seeing any
man to have care to recommend to the world the industrious labors and
painefull travels of our countrymen, myselfe returned from France,
determined to undertake the burden of that worke, wherein all others
pretended either ignorance or lacke of leasure, whereas the huge toile,
and the small profit to insue, were the chiefe causes of the refusall.

I calle the worke a burden, in consideration that these voyages lay so
dispersed and hidden in severall huc