where I found many of my especial good friends, as Master Robert Hay, one of the Grooms of his Majesty's Bed-chamber, Master David Drummond, one of his Gentlemen's-Pensioners, Master James Acmootye, one of the Grooms of the Privy Chamber, Captain Murray, Sir Henry Witherington Knight, Captain Tyrie, and divers others: and there Master Hay, Master Drummond, and the good old Captain Murray did very bountifully furnish me with gold for my expenses, but I being at dinner with those aforesaid gentlemen, as we were discoursing, there befel a strange accident, which I think worth the relating.

I know not upon what occasion they began to talk of being at sea in former times, and I, amongst the rest, said, I was at the taking of Cadiz; whereto an English gentleman replied, that he was the next good voyage after at the Islands; I answered him that I was there also. He demanded in what ship I was? I told him in the Rainbow of the Queens: why, quoth he, do you not know me? I was in the same ship, and my name is Witherington.

Sir, said I, I do remember the name well, but by reason it is near two and twenty years since I saw you, I may well forget the knowledge of you. Well said he, if you were in that ship, I pray you tell me some remarkable token that happened in the voyage, whereupon I told him two or three tokens; which he did know to be true. Nay then, said I, I will tell you another which, perhaps, you have not forgotten; as our ship and the rest of the fleet did ride at anchor at the Isle of Flores, one of the Isles of the Azores, there were some fourteen men and boys of our ship, that for novelty would go ashore, and see what fruit the island did bear, and what entertainment it would yield us; so being landed, we went up and down and could find nothing but stones, heath and moss, and we expected oranges, lemons, figs, musk-mellions, and potatoes; in the mean space the wind did blow so stiff, and the sea was so extreme rough, that our ship-boat could not come to the land to fetch us, for fear she should be beaten in pieces against the rocks; this continued five days, so that we were almost famished for want of food:

but at last, I squandering up and down, by the providence of God I happened into a cave or poor habitation, where I found fifteen loaves of bread, each of the quantity of a penny loaf in England, I having a valiant stomach of the age of almost of a hundred and twenty hours breeding, fell to, and ate two loaves and never said grace, and as I was about to make a horse-loaf of the third loaf, I did put twelve of them into my breeches, and my sleeves, and so went mumbling out of the cave, leaning my back against a tree, when upon the sudden a gentleman came to me, and said, "Friend, what are you eating? Bread, quoth I, for God's sake, said he, give me some. With that, I put my hand into my breech, being my best pantry, and gave him a loaf, which he received with many thanks, and said, that if ever he could requit it, he would.

I had no sooner told this tale, but Sir Henry Witherington did acknowledge himself to be the man that I had given the loaf unto two and twenty years before, where I found the proverb true, that men have more privilege than mountains in meeting.

In what great measure he did requite so small a courtesy, I will relate in this following discourse in my return through Northumberland: so leaving my man at the town of Burntisland, I told him I would but go to Stirling, and see the Castle there, and withal to see my honourable friends the Earl of Mar, and Sir William Murray Knight, Lord of Abercairney, and that I would return within two days at the most: but it fell out quite contrary; for it was and five and thirty days before I could get back again out of these noble men's company. The whole progress of my travel with them, and the cause of my stay I cannot with gratefulness omit; and thus it was.

A worthy gentleman named Master John Fenton, did bring me on my way six miles to Dunfermline, where I was well entertained, and lodged at Master John Gibb his house, one of the Grooms of his Majesty's Bedchamber, and I think the oldest servant the King hath: withal, I was well entertained there by Master Crighton at his own house, who went with me, and shewed me the

Queen's Palace; a delicate and princely mansion, withal I saw the ruins of an ancient and stately built Abbey, with fair gardens, orchards, meadows, belonging to the Palace: all which with fair and goodly revenues by the suppression of the Abbey, were annexed to the crown. There also I saw a very fair church, which though it be now very large and spacious, yet it hath in former times been much larger. But I taking my leave of Dunfermline, would needs go and see the truly noble Knight Sir George Bruce, at a town called the Culross: there he made me right welcome, both with variety of fare, and after all, he commanded three of his men to direct me to see his most admirable coal mines; which, if man can or could work wonders, is a wonder; for myself, neither in any travels that I have been in, nor any history that I have read, or any discourse that I have heard, did never see, read, or hear, of any work of man that might parallel or be equivalent with this unfellowed and unmatchable work and though all I can say of it, cannot describe it according to the worthiness of his vigilant industry, that was both the occasion, inventor, and maintainer of it: yet rather than the memory of so rare an enterprise, and so accomplished a profit to the commonwealth shall be raked and smothered in the dust of oblivion, I will give a little touch at the description of it, although I amongst writers, am like he that worse may hold the candle.

The mine hath two ways into it, the one by sea and the other by land; but a man may go into it by land, and return the same way if he please, and so he may enter into it by sea, and by sea he may come forth of it: but I for variety's sake went in by sea, and out by land. Now men may object, how can a man go into a mine, the entrance of it being into the sea, but that the sea will follow him, and so drown the mine? To which objection thus I answer, that at low water mark, the sea being ebbed away, and a great part of the sand bare; upon this same sand, being mixed with rocks and crags, did the master of this great work build a round circular frame of stone, very thick, strong, and joined together with glutinous or bituminous matter, so high withal that the

sea at the highest flood, or the greatest rage of storm or tempest, can neither dissolve the stones so well compacted in the building or yet overflow the height of it. Within this round frame, at all adventures, he did set workmen to dig with mattocks, pickaxes, and other instruments fit for such purposes. They did dig forty feet down right into and through a rock. At last they found that which they expected, which was sea coal, they following the vein of the mine, did dig forward still so that in the space of eight and twenty, or nine and twenty years, they have digged more than an English mile under the sea, so that when men are at work below, an hundred of the greatest ships in Britain may sail over their heads. Besides, the mine is most artificially cut like an arch or a vault, all that great length, with many nooks and byeways: and it is so made, that a man may walk upright in the most places, both in and out. Many poor people are there set on work, which otherwise through the want of employment would perish. But when I had seen the mine, and was come forth of it again; after my thanks given to Sir George Bruce, I told him that if the plotters of the Powder Treason in England had seen this mine, that they, perhaps, would have attempted to have left the Parliament House, and have undermined the Thames, and so to have blown up the barges and wherries, wherein the King, and all the estates of our kingdom were. Moreover, I said, that I could afford to turn tapster at London, so that I had but one quarter of a mile of his mine to make me a cellar, to keep beer and bottled ale in. But leaving these jests in

prose, I will relate a few

verses that I made

merrily of this
mine.

I THAT have wasted, months, weeks, days, and hours In viewing kingdoms, countries, towns, and towers, Without all measure, measuring many paces,

And with my pen describing many places,

With few additions of mine own devising,
Because I have a smack of Coryatizing,
Our Mandeville, Primaleon, Don Quixote,
Great Amadis, or Huon, travelled not

As I have done, or been where I have been,
Or heard and seen, what I have heard and seen;
Nor Britain's Odcombe, Zany brave Ulysses,
In all his ambling, saw the like as this is.
I was in, would I could describe it well,
A dark, light, pleasant, profitable hell,
And as by water I was wafted in,

I thought that I in Charon's boat had been,
But being at the entrance landed thus,
Three men there, instead of Cerboras,
Convey'd me in, in each one hand a light
To guide us in that vault of endless night,

There young and old with glim'ring candles burning
Dig, delve, and labour, turning and returning,
Some in a hole with baskets and with bags,
Resembling furies, or infernal hags:

There one like Tantalus feeding, and there one,
Like Sisyphus he rolls the restless stone.
Yet all I saw was pleasure mixed with profit,
Which proved it to be no tormenting Tophet:
For in this honest, worthy, harmless hell,
There ne'er did any damned devil dwell;
And th' owner of it gains by 't more true glory,
Than Rome doth by fantastic Purgatory.

A long mile thus I passed, down, down, steep, steep,
In deepness far more deep, than Neptune's deep,
Whilst o'er my head, in fourfold stories high,
Was earth, and sea, and air, and sun, and sky:
That had I died in that Cimmerian room,
Four elements had covered o'er my tomb:
Thus farther than the bottom did I go,
And many Englishmen have not done so :
Where mounting porpoises, and mountain whales,
And regiments of fish with fins and scales,
"Twixt me and heaven did freely glide and slide,
And where great ships may at an anchor ride: