Page:A Description of New England - Smith (1616).djvu/80

 masts, from Plimouth this yeare are gone foure or fiue saile: and from London as many; onely to make voyages of profit: where the Englishmen haue yet beene, all their returnes together (except Sir Fr. Popphames) would scarce make one a sauer of neere a douzen I could nominate; though there be fish sufficient, as I perswade my selfe, to fraught yearely foure or fiue hundred sayle, or as many as will goe. For, this fishing stretcheth along the Coast from Cape Cod to Newfound-land, which is seauen or eight hundred miles at the least; and hath his course in the deepes, and by the shore, all the yeare long; keeping their hants and feedings as the beasts of the field, & the birds of the aire. But, all men are not such as they should bee, that haue vndertaken those voiages: and a man that hath but heard of an instrument, can hardly vse it so well, as hee that by vse hath contriued to make it. All the Romanes were not Scipioes: nor all the Geneweses, Columbuses: nor all Spanyards, Corteses: had they diued no deeper in the secrets of their dis coueries, then wee, or stopped at such doubts and poore accidentall chances; they had neuer beene remembred as they are: yet had they no such certainties to begin as wee. But, to conclude, Adam and Eue did first beginne this innocent worke, To plant the earth to remaine to posteritie; but not without labour, trouble & industrie. Noe, and his family, beganne againe the second plan tation; and their seede as it still increased, hath still planted new Countries, and one countrie another: and so the world to that estate it is. But