‘[T]ouching the State of The Country of Guiana, and Whether It Were Fit to Be Planted By The English'

In the early summer of 1596, just as Lawrence Keymis completed his survey of the coastline between the Amazon and the Orinoco for Sir Walter Ralegh, Sir Robert Cecil consulted Richard Hakluyt as to whether the region was ‘fit to be planted by the English’. ¹ Two years later, in the dedicatory epistle to Sir Robert Cecil which prefaced volume two of the second edition of The Principal Navigations, Hakluyt noted that he had been much impressed by

the exact knowledge which you [Cecil] had gotten of those matters of Indian Navigations: and how carefull you were, not to be overtaken by any partiall affection to the Action, [which] appeared also, by the sound arguments which you made pro & contra, of the likelihood and reason of good or ill successe of the same, before the State and common wealth (wherein you have an extraordinarie voyce) should be farther engaged. ²