precisely is not known, secured the active aid and facile pen of the
geographical Richard Hakluyt, who wrote for him, as no man else could
write, in 1584, a treatise on Western Planting, a work intended probably
to prime the ministry and the Parliament, to enable Raleigh first to
secure the confirmation of his patent, and afterwards the co-operation
and active interest of the nobility and gentry in his enterprise. This
important hitherto unpublished volume of sixty-three large folio pages
in the hand writing of Hakluyt, after having probably served its purpose
and lain dormant for nearly three centuries, was bought at Earl
Mountnorris's sale at Arley Castle in December 1852, by Mr Henry Stevens
of Vermont, who, as he himself informs us, after partly copying it, and
endeavouring in vain to place it in some public or private library in
England or the United States, threw it into auction, where it was sold
by Messrs Puttick and Simpson in May 1854, for £44, as lot 474, Sir
Thomas Phillipps being the purchaser. The manuscript still adorns the
Phillipps library at Cheltenham. In 1868 a copy of this most suggestive
volume was obtained by the late Dr Leonard Woods for the Maine
Historical Society, and has since been edited with valuable notes by Mr
Charles Deane of Cambridge and with an Introduction by Dr Woods. It
appeared in 1877 as the second volume of the second series of the
Society's Collections.

This Treatise of Hakluyt under Raleigh's inspiration may be regarded as
the harbinger of Virginia history. Though intended for a special
purpose, it is of the highest importance in developing the history of
English maritime policy at that time, and defining the growth of the
English arguments, advantages and reasons for western planting. The book
is full of personal hints, and is immensely suggestive, showing us more
than anything else the master hand of Master Hakluyt in moulding
England's 'sea policie' and colonial navigation. No mere geographical