vnderstand, that herein I haue likewise preserued, disposed, and set in
order such Voyages, Nauigations, Traffikes, and Discoueries, as our Nation,
and especially the worthy inhabitants of this citie of London, haue
painefully performed to the South and Southeast parts of the world, without
the Streight of Gibraltar, vpon the coasts of Africa, about the Cape of
Buona Speranca, to and beyonde the East India. To come more neere vnto
particulars, I haue here set downe the very originals and infancie of our
trades to the Canarian Ilands, to the kingdomes of Barbarie, to the mightie
riuers of Senega and Gambia, to those of Madrabumba, and Sierra Leona, and
the Isles of Cape Verde, with twelue sundry voyages to the sultry kingdomes
of Guinea and Benin, to the Ile of San Thome, with a late and true report
of the weake estate of the Portugales in Angola, as also the whole course
of the Portugale Caracks from Lisbon to the barre of Goa in India, with the
disposition and qualitie of the climate neere and vnder the Equinoctiall
line, the sundry infallible markes and tokens of approaching vnto, and
doubling of The Cape of good Hope, the great variation of the compasse for
three or foure pointes towards the East between the Meridian of S. Michael
one of the Islands of the Azores, and the aforesaid Cape, with the returne
of the needle againe due North at the Cape Das Agulias, and that place
being passed outward bound, the swaruing backe againe thereof towards the
West, proportionally as it did before, the two wayes, the one within and
the other without the Isle of S. Laurence, the dangers of priuie rockes and
quicksands, the running seas, and the perils thereof, with the certaine and
vndoubted signes of land. All these and other particularities are plainly
and truely here deliuered by one Thomas Steuens a learned Englishman, who
in the yeere 1579 going as a passenger in the Portugale Fleete from Lisbon
into India, wrote the same from Goa to his father in England: Whereunto I
haue added the memorable voyage of M. Iames Lancaster, who doth not onely
recount and confirme most of the things aboue mentioned, but also doth
acquaint vs with the state of the voyage beyond Cape Comori, and the Isle