First printed as introduction to Messrs. MacLehose's

Edition of Hakluyt's Voyages, April, 1905.

Now revised and reissued separately, 1906.

I

THE VOYAGERS

The English Voyages of the
Sixteenth Century

I

"THE great prose epic of the modern The Epic English nation' is itself but an incident Voyages.

or episode in a greater and wider world-drama. The discovery and settlement of America by the western peoples of Europe is the last act in a play which began in the cradle of the Aryans and which unrolls its vast theme leisurely, observing none of the unities. In this historical pageant the hero is often changed; one nation after another presses to the front and draws to itself the eyes of all spectators; one after another falls from its pre-eminence and yields its place to a new-comer. For many ages the light which permits us to follow the for

of the