1577, he embarked for the fulfilment of this purpose, being resolved to take Peru itself from the Spaniards. His enterprise was known at the time as "the famous voyage," and ended in the first English circumnavigation of the globe.

Such novels as Kingsley's "Westward Ho! or, Sir Amyas Leigh" give a picture, hardly exaggerated, of the exciting achievements of these early seamen. Drake sailed from Plymouth, November 15, 1577, with one hundred and sixty-four sailors and adventurers in a fleet of five ships and barks, and after making some captures of Spanish vessels about the Cape de Verd Islands, he steered for the open sea. He was fiftyfour days out of sight of land-time enough to have made six ocean voyages in a Liverpool steamer-before he came in sight of the Brazils. There he cruised awhile and victualled his ships with seals, which are not now considered good eating. Following down the coast in the track of Magellan, he reached at last the strait which bears the name of this Portuguese explorer, but which no Englishman had yet traversed. Drake's object was to come by this unexpected ocean route to Peru, and there ravage the Spanish settlements.

Reaching the coast of Chili, he heard from an Indian in a canoe that there was a great Spanish ship at Santiago laden with treasure from Peru. Approaching the port, the Englishmen found the ship riding at anchor, having on board but six Spaniards and three negroes. These poor fellows, never dreaming that any but their own countrymen could have found their way there, welcomed the visitors, beating a drum in their honor, and setting forth a jar of Chilian wine for their entertainment. But as soon as the strangers entered, one of them, named Thomas Moon, began to lay about him with his sword in a most uncivil manner, striking one Spaniard, and shouting, "Go down, dog!" (Abaxo, perro !) All the Spaniards and negroes were at once driven below, except one, who jumped overboard and alarmed the town. The people of Santiago fled

to the woods, and the Englishmen landed and robbed the town, including a little chapel, from which they took "a silver chalice, two cruets, and one altar- cloth, the spoyle whereof our Generall gave to M. Fletcher, his minister." On board the captured ship they found abundance of wine and treasure, amounting to 37,000 ducats of Spanish money-a ducat being worth five and a half shillings English.

They sailed away, leaving their prisoners on shore. Landing at Tarapaca, they found a Spaniard lying asleep, with thirteen bars of silver beside him, these being worth 4000 ducats.

"We tooke the siluer," says the narrator, briefly, "and left the man." Landing for water at another place, they met a Spaniard and an Indian boy driving eight "Llamas or sheepe of Peru, which are as bigge as asses;" each of these having two bags of leather on his back, each bag holding fifty pounds of fine silver-800 pounds weight in all. Soon after they capt ured three small barks, one of them laden with silver, and another with a quantity of linen cloth. At Lima they found twelve ships at anchor, robbed them, and cut their cables; and afterwards they came up with a bark yielding eighty pounds of gold and a crucifix of gold and emeralds. Everywhere they took people wholly by surprise, such a thing as an English ship being a sight wholly new on the Pacific Ocean, altogether unexpected, and particularly unwelcome.

Everywhere they heard of a great Spanish treasure-ship, the Cacafuego, which had sailed before their arrival; they followed her to Payta and to Panama, and the "General" promised his chain of gold to any lookout who should spy her. Coming up with her at last, they fired three shots, striking down her mizzen-mast, and then captured her without resist ance. They found in her "great riches, as iewels and precious stones, thirteene chests full of royals [reals] of plate, fourscore pounds weight of golde and sixe and twentie tunne of siluer.' To show how thoroughly Drake did his work, piratical as it was, the narrator of the voyage says that there were found on board two silver cups, which were the pilot's, to whom the General said, "Senior [Señor] Pilot, you haue here two siluer cups; but I must needes haue one of them;" and the pilot gave him one "because hee could not otherwise chuse," and gave the other to the ship's steward, perhaps for as good a reason. Thus went the voyage; now rifling a town, now plundering a captive, now capturing a vessel and taking “a fawlcon [breastplate] of golde with a great emeraud in the breast thereof," from the owner in person. Never once did they en

counter an armed opponent, or engage in a fair fight; on the other hand, they were never guilty, as the Spaniards often were, of wanton cruelty, judging both sides by the testimony of their own witnesses. It was an ignoble warfare in one sense; but when we consider that these Englishmen were in an unknown sea, with none but unwilling pilots, and that there was not a man along the shore who was not their enemy, there was surely an element of daring in the whole affair.

They repaired their ships at the island of Sanno; and there the attacks upon the Spaniards ended. The narrator thus sums up the situation: "Our General at this place and time, thinking himselfe both in respect of his priuate iniuries received from the Spaniards, as also of their contempts and in

PART OF MAP OF DRAKE'S VOYAGES, PUBLISHED BY J. HONDIUS IN HOLLAND TOWARDS THE CLOSE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

dignities offered to our countrey and Prince in generall, sufficiently satisfied and reuenged, and supposing that her Maiestie at his returne would rest contented with this seruice, purposed to continue no longer upon the Spanish coastes, but began to consider and to consult of the best way for his countrey."

He resolved at last to avoid the Strait of Magellan, which he had found dangerous, and the Atlantic Ocean, where he was too well known, and to go northward along the coast, and sail across the Pacific as he had already crossed the Atlantic. He sailed as far north as California, which he called New Albion; he entered "a faire and good bay," which may have been that of San Francisco; he took possession of the country in the name of Queen Elizabeth, setting up a post with that announcement. He then supposed, but erroneously, that the Spaniards had never visited that region, and his recorder says of it: "There is no part of earth here to bee taken up wherein there is not some speciall likelihood of gold and silver." Then he sailed across the Pacific, this passage lasting from midsummer until October 18 (1579), when he and his men came among the islands off the coast of Africa, and so rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and reached England at last, after three years' absence. They were the first Englishmen to sail round the world, and the first of their countrymen to visit those islands of "the gorgeous East" which Portugal had first reached, and Spain had now wrested from Portugal.

The feats of Hawkins and Drake, clouded as they were by the slave-trade in one case, and by what seemed much like piracy in the other, produced a great stir in England. “The nakednesse of the Spaniards and their long-hidden secrets are now at length espied." Thus wrote Hakluyt three years after Drake's return, and urged "the deducting of some colonies of our superfluous people into those temperate and fertile partes of America which, being within six weekes sailing of England,