37.  Whosoever shall show himself a coward upon any landing or otherwise, he shall be disarmed and made a labourer or carrier of victuals for the rest.

38.  No man shall land any man in any foreign ports without order from the general, by the sergeant-major[13] or other officer, upon pain of death.

39.  You shall take especial care when God shall send us to land in the Indies, not to eat of any fruit unknown, which fruit you do not find eaten with worms or beasts under the tree.

40.  You shall avoid sleeping on the ground, and eating of new fish until it be salted two or three hours, which will otherwise breed a most dangerous flux; so will the eating of over-fat hogs or fat turtles.

41.  You shall take care that you swim not in any rivers but where you see the Indians swim, because most rivers are full of alligators.

42.  You shall not take anything from any Indian by force, for if you do it we shall never from thenceforth be relieved by them, but you must use them with all courtesy.  But for trading and exchanging with them, it must be done by one or two of every ship for all the rest, and those to be directed by the cape merchant[14] of the ship, otherwise all our commodities will become of vile price, greatly to our hindrance.

43.  For other orders on the land we will establish them (when God shall send us thither) by general consent.  In the meantime I shall value every man, honour the better sort, and reward the meaner according to their sobriety and taking care for the service of God and prosperity of our enterprise.

44.  When the admiral shall hang out a flag in the main shrouds, you shall know it to be a flag of council.  Then come aboard him.

45.  And wheresoever we shall find cause to land, no man shall force any woman be she Christian or heathen, upon pain of death.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] The articles marked with an asterisk do not appear in the Gorges set, and were presumably those which Ralegh added to suit the conditions of his expedition or which he borrowed from other precedents.

[2] Cape Finisterre.

[3] Cape St. Vincent.

[4] MS. Cape Devert.

[5] MS. ‘loofe.’

[6] Corporal of the field meant the equivalent of an A.D.C. or orderly.

[7] This appears to be the first known mention of a court-martial being provided for officially at sea.

[8] This passage is corrupt in the MS. and is restored from Wimbledon’s Article 32, post, p. 58.

[9] This was the Spanish practice.  There is no known mention of it earlier in the English service.

[10] Gorges’s article about ‘Musket-arrows’ is here omitted by Ralegh.

[11] I.e. ‘noisy confusion.’  Shakspeare has ’I heard a bustling rumour like a fray.’