English in the 16th Century!

Have you ever wondered how languages evolve? New slangs and new words become a part of our lives? I came across this fantastic book that's a compilation of writings from people in the fifteen and sixteenth century in America - starting with Columbus himself, and his description of his trip to America in his own words.

Sample this for English from a text in 1579:

In recompense of those things which they had received of us, as shirts, linen cloth, etc., they bestowed upon our general and divers of our company divers things , as feathers, cauls of network, the quivers of their arrows made of fawn-skins, and the very skins of beasts that their women wore upon their bodies. Having thus had their fill of this time's visiting and beholding of us, they departed with joy to their houses, which houses are digged round within the earth and have from the uppermost brims of the circle clefts of wood set up and joined close together at the top like our spire on the teeple of a church, which, being covered with earth, suffer no water to enter and are very warm. The door in the most part of them performs the office also of a chimney to let out the smoke; it is made in bigness and fashion like to an ordinary scuttle in a ship, and standing slopewise.

And check this piece for spellings:

We ourselves, during the time we were there, used to sucke it after their manner, as also since our return, and have found many rare and woonderfull experiments of the vertues thereof: of which the relation would require a volume by it selfe: the use of it by so many of late, men and women of great calling, as els, and some learned Physicians also, is of sufficient witnesse.

Doesn't it strike you as very interesting as to how the spellings are a lot more apt than their current versions? Here's another one:

When her father, with the utmost of his policie and power, sought to surprise mee, having but eighteene with mee, the darke night could not affright her from comming through the irksome woods, and with watered eies gave me intelligence, with her best advice to escape his furie; which had hee knowne, hee had surely slaine her.

The book is "The Mammoth Book of How it Happened - America", and is a must-have for history buffs. Starting with Columbus's arrival, it traces the history of America from the late fifteenth century right up to 9/11, in the words of the men who were there and saw it all!