Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/203

 but came by caravan,—of Virginia, Guiana, and the "still-vex'd Bermoothes," the "Anthropophaginian," men "whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," not positively discredited by Sir Walter Raleigh; one-leg and one-foot savages, seen by early sailors to the coast of Maine,—all the misunderstanding and exaggeration of a new period of adventure and discovery of new lands were bountifully nourished upon sack and canary in the London taverns. What legends were fabricated at the Mitre in Cheapside, the Swan at Dowgate, the Boar's Head near London Stone, the Ship at the Exchange, the Red Lion in the Strand! These were haunts of Frobisher's and Drake's men; of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's, fresh from Newfoundland in the only ship that was saved; of Barbour's expedition to Roanoake in 1584; of Gosnold's, in 1602, to Cape Cod and the islands in Buzzard's Bay. The sack grew apprehensive and forgetive, and justified Falstaff's eulogy. Bermoothes was not the only region vexed by devils and spirits, but every tavern from Plymouth to London. A trace of Shakspeare's interest in these London entertainments is found in the "Tempest," where Trinculo wishes that he had Caliban in England for a show. "There would this monster make a man: any strange beast there makes a man; when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian." Captain Weymouth was sent by Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Chief Justice Popham, in 1605, to found a