Hispaniola [Hayti] ... and here he had reasonable utterance [sale] of his English commodities, as also of some part of his Negroes, trusting the Spaniards no further than that by his own strength he was able still to master them.’  At ’Monte Christi, another port on the north side of Hispaniola ... he made vent of [sold] the whole number of his Negroes, for which he received by way of exchange such a quantity of merchandise that he did not only lade his own three ships with hides, ginger, sugars, and some quantity of pearls, but he freighted also two other hulks with hides and other like commodities, which he sent into Spain,’ where both hulks and hides were confiscated as being contraband.

Nothing daunted, he was off again in 1564 with four ships and a hundred and seventy men.  This time Elizabeth herself took shares and lent the Jesus of Lubeck, a vessel of seven hundred tons which Henry VIII had bought for the navy.  Nobody questioned slavery in those days.  The great Spanish missionary Las Casas denounced the Spanish atrocities against the Indians.  But he thought negroes, who could be domesticated, would do as substitutes for Indians, who could not be domesticated.  The Indians withered at the white man’s touch.  The negroes, if properly treated, throve, and were safer than among their enemies at home.  Such was the argument for slavery; and it was true so far as it went.  The argument against, on the score of ill treatment, was only gradually heard.  On the score of general human rights it was never heard at all.

’At departing, in cutting the foresail lashings a marvellous misfortune happened to one of the officers in the ship, who by the pulley of the sheet was slain out of hand.’  Hawkins ’appointed all the masters of his ships an Order for the keeping of good company in this manner:—­The small ships to be always ahead and aweather of the Jesus, and to speak twice a-day with the Jesus at least....  If the weather be extreme, that the small ships cannot keep company with the Jesus, then all to keep company with the Solomon....  If any happen to any misfortune, then to show two lights, and to shoot off a piece of ordnance.  If any lose company and come in sight again, to make three yaws [zigzags in their course] and strike the mizzen three times.  SERVE GOD DAILY.  LOVE ONE ANOTHER.  PRESERVE YOUR VICTUALS.  BEWARE OF FIRE, AND KEEP GOOD COMPANY.’

John Sparke, the chronicler of this second voyage, was full of curiosity over every strange sight he met with.  He was also blessed with the pen of a ready writer.  So we get a story that is more vivacious than Hakluyt’s retelling of the first voyage or Hawkins’s own account of the third.  Sparke saw for the first time in his life negroes, Caribs, Indians, alligators, flying-fish, flamingoes, pelicans, and many other strange sights.  Having been told that Florida was full of unicorns he at once concluded that it must also be full of lions; for how could the one kind exist without the other kind to balance it?  Sparke was a soldier who never found his sea legs.  But his diary, besides its other merits, is particularly interesting as being the first account of America ever written by an English eyewitness.