Literary Executor of the late Henry Stevens of Vermont. 39, Great Russell Street, London, W.C. 10th February, 1900.
THOMAS HARIOT
AND HIS
ASSOCIATES
COLLECTORS OF RARE English books always speak reverently and even mysteriously of the 'quarto Hariot' as they do of the 'first folio.' It is given to but few of them ever to touch or to see it, for not more than seven copies are at present known to exist. Even four of these are locked up in public libraries, whence they are never likely to pass into private hands.
One copy is in the Grenville Library; another is in the Bodleian; a third slumbers in the University of Leyden; a fourth is in the Lenox Library; a fifth in Lord Taunton's; a sixth in the late Henry Huth's; and a seventh produced £300 in 1883 in the Drake sale.
The little quarto volume of Hariot's Virginia is as important as it is rare, and as beautiful as it is important. Few English books of its time, 1588, surpass it either in typographic execution or literary merit. It was not probably thrown into the usual channels of commerce, as it bears the imprint of a privately-printed book, without the name or address of a publisher, and is not found entered in the registers of Stationers' Hall. It bears the arms of Sir Walter Raleigh on the reverse of the title, and is highly commended by Ralfe Lane, the late Governor of the Colony, who testifies, 'I dare boldly auouch It may very well pass with the credit of truth even amongst the most true relations of this age.' It was manifestly put forth somewhat hurriedly to counteract, in influential quarters, certain slanders and aspersions spread abroad in England by some ignorant persons returned from Virginia, who 'woulde seeme to knowe so much as no men more,' and who ' had little vnderstanding, lesse discretion, and more tongue then was needful or requisite.' Hariot's book is dated at the end, February 1588, that is 1589 by present reckoning. Raleigh's assignment is dated the 7th of March following. It is probable therefore that the 'influential quarters' above referred to meant the Assignment of Raleigh's Charter which would have expired by the limitation of six years on the 24th of March, 1590, if no colonists had been shipped or plantation attempted. It is possible also that Theodore De Bry's presence in London, as mentioned below, may have hastened the printing of the volume.
Indeed, the little book professes to be only an epitome of what might be expected, for near the end the author says, ' this is all the fruits of our labours, that I haue thought necessary to aduertise you of at present;' and, further on, ' I haue ready in a discourse by it self in maner of a Chronicle according to the course of times, and when time shall bee thought conuenicnt, shall also be published.' Hariot's 'Chronicle of Virginia ' among things long lost upon earth ! It is to be hoped that some day the historic trumpet of Fame will sound loud enough to awaken it, together with Cabot's lost bundle of maps and journals deposited with William Worthington ; Ferdinand Columbus' lost life of his father in the original Spanish; and Peter Martyr's book on the first circumnavigation of the globe by the fleet of Magalhaens, which he so fussily sent to Pope Adrian to be read and printed, also lost! Hakluyt, in his volume of 1589, dated in his preface the 19th of November, gives something of a chronicle of Virginian events, 1584-1589, with a reprint of this book. But there are reasons for believing that this is not the chronicle which Hariot refers to. As White's original drawings have recently turned up after nearly three centuries, may we not still hope to see also Hariot's Chronicle?
However, till these lost jewels are found let us appreciate what is still left to us. Hariot's 'True Report' is usually considered the first original authority in our language relating to that part of English North America now called the United States, and is indeed so full and trustworthy that almost everything of a primeval character that we know of 'Ould Virginia' may be traced back to it as to a first parent. It is an integral portion of English history, for England supplied the enterprise and the men. It is equally an integral portion of American history, for America supplied the scene and the material.
Without any preliminary flourish or subsequent reflections, the learned author simply and truthfully portrays in 1585-6 the land and the people of Virginia, the condition and commodities of the one, with the habits and character of the other, of that narrow strip of coast lying between Cape Fear and the Chesapeake, chiefly in the present State of North Carolina. This land, called by the natives Wingandacoa, was named in England in 1584 Virginia, in compliment to Queen Elizabeth. This name at first covered only a small district, but afterwards it possessed varying limits, extending at one time over North Virginia even to 45 degrees north.
Raleigh's Virginia soon faded, but her portrait to the life is to be found in Hariot's book, especially when taken with the pictures by Captain John White, so often referred to in the text. This precious little work is perhaps the most truthful, trustworthy, fresh, and important representation of primitive American human life, animals and vegetables for food, natural productions and commercial commodities that has come down to us. Though the 'first colonie' of Raleigh, like all his subsequent efforts in this direction, was a present failure, Hariot and White have left us some, if not ample, compensation in their picturesque account of the savage life and lavish nature of pre-Anglo-Virginia, the like of which we look for in vain elsewhere, either in Spanish, French, or English colonization.
Indeed, nearly all we know of the uncontaminated American aborigines, their mode of life and domestic economy, is derived from this book, and therefore its influence and results as an original authority cannot well be over-estimated. We have many Spanish and French books of a kindred character, but none so lively and lifelike as this by Hariot, especially as afterwards illustrated by De Bry's engravings from White's drawings described below.
The first breath of European enterprise in the New World, combined with its commercial Christianity, seems in all quarters, particularly the Spanish and English, to have at once taken off the bloom and freshness of the Indian. His natural simplicity and grandeur of character immediately quailed before the dictatorial owner of property and civilization. The Christian greed for gold and the civilized cruelty practised without scruple in plundering the unregenerate and unbaptized of their possessions of all kinds, soon taught the Indian cunning and the necessity of resorting to all manner of savage and untutored devices to enable him to cope with his relentless enemies for even restrained liberty and self-preservation; nay, even for very existence, and this too on his own soil that generously gave him bread and meat. All these by a self-asserted authority the coming European civilizer, with Bible in hand, taxed with tribute of gold, labour, liberty, life. This has been the common lot of the western races.
It is therefore refreshing to catch this mirrored glimpse of Virginia, her inhabitants, and her resources of primitive nature, before she was contaminated by the residence and monopoly of the white man. It may have been best in the long run that the European races should displace the aborigines of the New World, but it is a melancholy reflection upon ' go ye into all the world and preach the gospel unto every creature,' that no tribe of American Indians has yet been absorbed into the body politic. Many a white man has let himself down into savage life and habits, but no tribe of aborigines has yet come up to the requirements, the honours, and the delights of European civilization. Like the tall wild grass before the prairie-fire, the aboriginal races are gradually but surely being swept away by the progress of civilization. Now that they are gone or going the desire to gather real and visible memorials of them is increasing, but fate seems to have swept these also from the grasp of the greedy conqueror. Cortes gathered the golden art treasures of Montezuma and sent them to Charles the Fifth, but the spoiler was spoiled on the high seas, and not a drinking-cup or ringer-ring of that western barbaric monarch remains to tell us of his island splendour.
A historical word upon the events that led up to Raleigh's Virginia patent may not be out of place in a bibliographical Life of Hariot. The patent was no sudden freak of fortune but was the natural outgrowth of stirring events. Had it not been allotted to Raleigh it would doubtless soon after have fallen to some other promoter. But Raleigh was the Devonshire war-horse that first snuffed the breeze from afar.
