Harcourt, Robert

Robert Harcourt  travelled to Guiana between 1608 and 1610. This edition of the work contains the Patent of Guiana, not found in the second edition. It is essentially a promotional document for the author's plantation, a tract of land lying between the Amazon and Dollesquebe rivers, and it did much to encourage the idea of English colonisation in the Americas. Harcourt points out the rich commercial potential to be found in the sugar, cotton, tobacco, indigo and possibly cochineal growing there. He was actually in Guiana for only four days, leaving his brother and much of the rest of the ship's company to colonise the land, and, owing to personal misfortunes, was unable to visit it again himself. Roger North, however, combined his own and Harcourt's companies and organised the later transportation of a hundred settlers. Harcourt, however, was in the end ruined financially by the venture.