Principall Secretarie to her Maiestie, Master of the Court of Wards and
Liueries, and one of her Maiesties most honourable Priuie Councell.

Right honourable, your fauourable acceptance of my second volume of the
English voyages offred vnto you the last yere, your perusing of the same at
your conuenient leasure, your good testimony of my selfe and of my
trauailes therein, together with the infallible signes of your earnest
desire to doe mee good, which very lately, when I thought least thereof,
brake forth into most bountiful and acceptable effects: these
considerations haue throughly animated and encouraged me to present vnto
your prudent censure this my third and last volume also. The subiect and
matter herein contained is the fourth part of the world, which more
commonly then properly is called America: but by the chiefest Authors The
new world. New, in regard of the new and late discouery thereof made by
Christopher Colon, aliàs Columbus, a Genouois by nation, in the yere of
grace 1492. And world, in respect of the huge extension thereof, which to
this day is not throughly discouered, neither within the Inland nor in the
coast, especially toward the North and Northwest, although on the either
side it be knowen vnto vs for the space of fiue thousand leagues at the
least, compting and considering the trending of the land, and for 3000.
more on the backeside in the South Sea from the Streight of Magellan to
Cape Mendoçino and Noua Albion. So that it seemeth very fitly to be called
A newe worlde. Howbeit it cannot be denied but that Antiquitie had some
kinde of dimme glimse, and vnperfect notice thereof. Which may appeare by
the relation of Plato in his two worthy dialogues of Timæus and Critias
vnder the discourse of that mighty large yland called by him Atlantis,
lying in the Ocean sea without the Streight of Hercules, now called the
Straight of Gibraltar, being (as he there reporteth) bigger then Africa and
Asia: And by that of Aristotle in his booke De admirandis auditionibus of
the long nauigation of certaine Carthaginians, who sayling forth of the