[3] A more extended account or these islands will be found in Part III. of
    this work.—­E.

A GENERAL HISTORY AND COLLECTION OF VOYAGES AND TRAVELS.

PART II.

GENERAL VOYAGES AND TRAVELS, CHIEFLY OF DISCOVERY FROM THE ERA OF DON HENRY, PRINCE OF PORTUGAL, IN 1412, TO THAT OF GEORGE III.  IN 1760.

CHAP.  I.

Summary Deduction of the Discoveries of the World, from their first Original, to the year 1555, by Antonio Galvano[1].

INTRODUCTION.

This treatise was written in the Portuguese language, by Antonio Galvano, who had been governor of Ternate, the chief of the Molucca Islands, and was first translated into English by the celebrated Richard Hakluyt, who dedicated it to Sir Robert Cecil, Principal Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth.  It was afterwards inserted in Osbornes, or the Oxford Collection of Voyages and Travels, and forms an appendix to the first volume of Clarke’s Progress of Maritime Discovery; and from these sources the present edition has been carefully prepared.  Of Richard Hakluyt, the original translator, the following notice is worthy of being preserved.  “The great Richard Hakluyt was descended from an ancient family at Yetton in Herefordshire, and was educated at Westminster School, from whence he was elected a student of Christ Church, in the University of Oxford, where he took the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts.  Entering into holy orders, he was first made a prebendary of Bristol, and afterwards of Westminster, and rector of Witheringset in Suffolk.  Besides this translation, he illustrated the eight decades of Peter Martyr Angelericus de Novo Orbe with curious notes.  He also translated from the Portuguese, Virginia, richly valued by the description of Florida, her next neighbour; and wrote notes of certain commodities, in good request in the East Indies, Molucca, and China; but what has most deservedly perpetuated his name, is his great pains, and judgment, in collecting English Voyages, Navigations, Trafficks, and Discoveries[2].”

Both from the nature of this treatise on the origin and progress of maritime discovery, and from respect to the memory of Hakluyt, the father of our English collections of voyages and travels, it has been selected for insertion in this place, as an appropriate introduction to the Second Part of our arrangement; because its author may be considered as almost an original authority for the early discoveries of the Portuguese and Spaniards.  Although it may be considered in some measure as not precisely conformable with our plan, yet one portion of this summary is directly in point; and, the whole being curious, and in no respect tedious, it is here given entire; changing the antiquated English of Hakluyt into modern language.  Although