“With a general consent of all our company, it was ordained that there should be a palmer or ferula which should be in the keeping of him who was taken with an oath; and that he who had the palmer should give to every one that he took swearing, a palmads with it and the femla; and whosoever at the time of evening or morning prayer was found to have the palmer, should have three blows given him by the captain or the master; and that he should still be bound to free himself by taking another, or else to run in danger of continuing the penalty, which, being executed a few days, reformed the vice, so that in three days together was not one oath heard to be sworn.”

The regulations for Luke Fox’s voyage commenced thus:—­

“For as much as the good success and prosperity of every action doth consist in the due service and glorifying of God, knowing that not only our being and preservation, but the prosperity of all our actions and enterprises do immediately depend on His Almighty goodness and mercy; it is provided-

“First, that all the company, as well officers as others, shall duly repair every day twice at the call of the bell to hear public prayers to be read, such as are authorized by the church, and that in a godly and devout manner, as good Christians ought.

“Secondly, that no man shall swear by the name of God, or use any profane oath, or blaspheme His holy name.”

To symptoms such as these, we cannot but attach a very different value when they are the spontaneous growth of common minds, unstimulated by sense of propriety or rules of the service, or other official influence lay or ecclesiastic, from what we attach to the somewhat similar ceremonials in which, among persons whose position is conspicuous, important enterprises are now and then inaugurated.

We have said as much as we intend to say of the treatment by the Spaniards of the Indian women.  Sir Walter Raleigh is commonly represented by historians as rather defective, if he was remarkable at all, on the moral side of his character.  Yet Raleigh can declare proudly, that all the time he was on the Oronooko, “neither by force nor other means had any of his men intercourse with any woman there;” and the narrator of the incidents of Raleigh’s last voyage acquaints his correspondent “with some particulars touching the government of the fleet, which, although other men in their voyages doubtless in some measure observed, yet in all the great volumes which have been written touching voyages, there is no precedent of so godly severe and martial government, which not only in itself is laudable and worthy of imitation, but is also fit to be written and engraven on every man’s soul that coveteth to do honour to his country.”

Once more, the modern theory of Drake is, as we said above, that he was a gentleman-like pirate on a large scale, who is indebted for the place which he fills in history to the indistinct ideas of right and wrong prevailing in the unenlightened age in which he lived. and who therefore demands all the toleration of our own enlarged humanity to allow him to remain there.  Let us see how the following incident can be made to coincide with this hypothesis:—­