FRANCIS DRAKE.CHAPTER XXVI.ORIGIN OF ENGLISH PIRACY—SIR JOHN HAWKINS—FRANCIS DRAKE—HIS FIRST VOYAGE TO THE SPANISH MAIN—COMMISSION GRANTED BY QUEEN ELIZABETH—EXPEDITION AGAINST THE SPANISH POSSESSIONS—EXPLOITS AT MOGADOR AND SANTIAGO—CROSSING THE LINE—ARRIVAL IN PATAGONIA—TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF DOUGHTY—PASSAGE THROUGH MAGELLAN'S STRAIT—ADVENTURES OF WILLIAM PITCHER AND SEVEN MEN—CAPE HORN—ARRIVAL AT VALPARAISO—RIFLING OF A CATHOLIC CHURCH.We have thus shown that, while the Spanish and Portuguese had succeeded triumphantly in their maritime expeditions, the English had disastrously failed in theirs. The tropics were held in exclusive possession by the two former nations; and the only two known routes by which ships could sail thither were also in theirpower. These two nations were Catholic: England was Protestant, and disinherited therefore, as it seemed, of her lawful share in the riches of the world. She had thus far wasted her means and endangered the lives of her citizens in fruitless attempts to find a route for herself, by the northwest or the northeast, to the lands of gold and gums. Baffled in these efforts, she permitted, if she did not encourage, a certain class of her subjects to engage in a system of warfare against Spain which can be characterized by no milder term than piracy. Still, those who resorted to it adduced ready arguments to prove that, so far from engaging in piratical practices, they were employed in open warfare and an honest cause. Spain and England were in a state of manifest enmity, they urged, more bitter on both sides than if they had been avowedly at war. No English subject trading in the Spanish dominions was safe unless he were a Roman Catholic, or unless, being a heretic, he succumbed to the menaces or the tortures of the Holy Inquisition. These outrages were resented by the English people before they were taken up by the British Government; and the injured parties, calling to their aid all persons of adventurous spirit or shattered fortunes, set out upon the sea, if not with the commission, at least with the connivance, of the crown, to avenge their wrongs themselves. They did not consider themselves to be pirates, because of this tacit sanction given by the Government, because of the fact that they carried on hostilities, not against all who traversed the sea, but against the Spaniards only, and because of the risk they ran,—for if taken by the enemy they had no mercy to expect. It thus became the fashion in England for men of desperate fortunes and damaged character to seek to retrieve the one and redeem the other by cruising against the Spaniards.Among the earlier adventurers of this stamp was one Sir John Hawkins. His exploits were for a time brilliant and successful: at last, however, they were disastrous, and one of hisyoung kinsmen, Francis Drake by name, was discreditably involved. The latter had embarked his whole means in this adventure, and lost in it all his money and no little reputation,—for he disobeyed orders and deserted his benefactor and superior in the hour of need. He brought his vessel,—the Judith, of fifty tons,—however, safely home.Drake now resolved to engage permanently in the lawless but exciting career of which he had lately witnessed several interesting episodes. It was long before he could obtain the means of fitting out an expedition under his own command. He at last bought and equipped two vessels,—one of two hundred and fifty tons, the other of seventy,—manned them with seventy-three men, and sailed for the Spanish dominions in America. He attacked and took the town of Nombre de Dios, on the Isthmus of Darien, but was soon obliged to retreat. He afterwards took Venta Cruz, on the same isthmus, and had the good fortune to fall in with three convoys of mules laden with gold and silver, going from Panama to Nombre de Dios. He carried off the gold and buried the silver. From the summit of a mountain he obtained a sight of the Pacific Ocean or South Sea, which so kindled his enthusiasm that he uttered a fervent prayer that he might be the first Englishman who should sail upon it. He was already the first Englishman who had beheld it.On his return to England with his treasure, he entered for a time the volunteer service against Ireland, while waiting an opportunity to execute the grand project he had formed. At last, Sir Christopher Hutton, Vice-Chamberlain and Counsellor of the Queen, presented him to Elizabeth, to whom Drake imparted his scheme of ravaging the Spanish possessions in the South Sea. The queen listened; but whether she gave him a commission, or merely assured him of her favorable sentiments, is a disputed point. It is alleged that she gave him a sword and pronounced these singular words:—"We do account that he which striketh at thee, Drake, striketh at us!" He fitted outan expedition, at his own cost and with the help of friends and partners in the enterprise, consisting of five ships,—the largest, the Pelican, his flag-ship, of one hundred tons, and the smallest of fifteen. These vessels were manned by one hundred and fifty-four men. They carried out the frames of four pinnaces, to be put together as occasion required, and, after the example of the Portuguese in their first Eastern voyages, took with them specimens of the arts and civilization of their country, with which to operate upon the minds of the people with whom they should come in contact. They sailed in November, 1577, but were driven back by a tempest. The expedition finally got to sea on the 13th of December.At the island of Mogador, off the coast of Barbary, Drake attempted to traffic with the Moors, and in an exchange of hostages lost a man, who was taken by the natives: they then refused to trade, and Drake, after a vain effort to recover the sailor, left the island, and followed the African coast to the southward. Between Mogador and Cape Blanco he took several Spanish barks called canters,—one of which, measuring forty tons, he admitted into his fleet, sending his prisoners off in the Christopher, the pinnace of fifteen tons and one of the original five vessels. He landed on the island of Mayo, where the inhabitants salted their wells, forsook their houses, and drove away their goats. Off the island of Santiago he took a Portuguese vessel bound for Brazil, carrying numerous passengers and laden with wine. He kept the pilot, Nuno da Sylva, gave the passengers and crew a pinnace, and transferred the wine to the Pelican. The prize he made one of the fleet, having given her a crew of twenty-eight men.At Cape Verd Drake left the African shore, and, steering steadily to the southwest, was nine weeks without seeing land. When near the equator, he prepared his men for the change of climate by bleeding them all himself. He made the coast of Brazil on the 4th of April, 1578,—the savage inhabitantsmaking large bonfires at their approach, for the purpose, as he learned from Sylva, of inducing their devils to wreck the ships upon their coast. On the 27th he entered the Rio de la Plata, and, sailing up the stream till he found but three fathoms' water, filled his casks by the ship's side. The same night, the Portuguese prize, now named the Mary, and commanded by John Doughty, parted company, as did two days afterwards the Spanish canter, which had been named the Christopher, after the pinnace for which she had been exchanged. Drake, believing them to have concealed themselves in shoal water, built a raft and set sail in quest of them.DRAKE AND HIS RAFT.Early in June, Drake landed on the coast of Patagonia, where he broke up the Swan, of fifty tons, for firewood, having taken every thing out of her which could be of any use,—his object being to lessen the number of ships and the chances of separation, and to render his force more compact. His men easily killed two hundred and fifty seals in an hour, which furnished them with very tolerable eating. They entered into very pleasant relations with the natives, delighting them with the sound of their trumpets, intoxicating them with Canary wine, and dancing with them in their own savage and extravagant manner. The natives gave Drake a vexatious proof of their agility and address, by stealing his hat from his head and baffling every effort made to recover it. Shortly after sailing from thisspot, named by Drake Seal Bay, the fleet fell in with the Christopher again, which Drake ordered to be unloaded and set adrift. He soon met the Portuguese Mary, and on the 20th the whole squadron anchored in the harbor named Port Julian by Magellan. Intercourse was attempted with the Indians, but was stopped on account of a fray begun by the savages, in which two of the English and one of their own party were killed. The natives made no further attempt to molest the strangers during their two months' stay in the harbor.DRAKE AND THE PATAGONIANS.A very tragical event now followed. Magellan had in this place, as we have stated, quelled a dangerous mutiny, by hanging several of a disobedient and rebellious company. The gibbet was still standing, and beneath it the bones of the executed were now bleaching. Drake apprehended a similar peril, and was led to inquire into the actions of John Doughty. He found, in his investigations, that Doughty had embarked in the enterprise rather in the hope of rising to the chief command than of remaining what he started,—a gentleman volunteer: he had views,it seemed, of supplanting Drake by exciting a mutiny, and of sailing off in one of the ships upon his own account. The company were called together and made acquainted with the particulars; Doughty was tried for attempting to foment a mutiny, found guilty, and condemned to death by forty commissaries chosen from among the various crews. Doughty partook of the communion with Drake and several of his officers, dined at the same table with them, and, in the last glass of wine he ever raised to his lips, drank their healths and wished them farewell. He walked to the place of execution without displaying unusual emotion, embraced the general, took leave of the company, offered up a prayer for the queen and her realm, and was then beheaded near Magellan's gibbet. Drake addressed the company, exhorting them to unity and obedience, and ordered them to prepare to receive the holy communion on the following Sabbath, the first Sunday in the month.DRAKE CONDEMNING DOUGHTY.This tragedy has been embellished by many fanciful additions on the part of Drake's apologists, and upon the part of his calumniators by many false statements. It is said by the former that Drake, after Doughty's condemnation, offered him the choice of three alternatives,—either to be executed in Patagonia, to be set ashore and left, or to be sent back to England, there to answer for his acts before the Lords of her Majesty's Council; and that Doughty replied that he would notendanger his soul by being left among savage infidels; that, as for returning to England, if any one could be found willing to accompany him on so disgraceful an errand, the shame of the return would be more grievous than death; that he therefore preferred ending his life where he was,—a choice from which no argument could persuade him. These assertions can hardly be correct, as nothing of the kind is set forth in the account of the voyage given by Fletcher, the chaplain of the expedition. It is highly improbable that Doughty, if conscious of innocence, would have rejected the offer of a trial in England; while it is unlikely that the offer was ever made, as Drake could ill spare a ship in which to send the prisoner home. Different opinions are held in the matter by different writers. Admiral Burney thought the statements too imperfect for forming, and the whole matter too delicate to express, an opinion. Dr. Johnson wrote thus on the subject:—"What designs Doughty could have formed with any hope of success, or to what actions worthy of death he could have proceeded without accomplices, it is difficult to imagine. Nor, on the other hand, does there appear any temptation, from either hope, fear, or interest, that might induce Drake, or any commander in his state, to put to death an innocent man on false pretences." Southey, in his Lives of the Admirals, is disposed to consider Drake as justified in making a severe example. Harris is of opinion that the act was "the most rash and blameworthy of the admiral's career." Sylva, Drake's Portuguese pilot, once said that Doughty was punished for attempting to abandon the expedition and return to England, and thus evidently thought that a sufficient motive existed for his execution. And it is worth remarking that the Spaniards, who never neglected an opportunity of loading Drake with obloquy, extolled him in this case for his vigilance and decision. Doughty was buried on an island in the harbor, together with the bodies of the two men slain in the fray with the savages.The Portuguese prize, being now found leaky and troublesome,was broken up, the fleet being thus reduced to three. On the 21st of August, Drake entered Magellan's Strait,—being the second commander who ever performed the voyage through it. He cleared the channel in sixteen days, and entered the South Sea on the 6th of September. Here the Marygold was lost in a terrible storm, and the Elizabeth, being separated from Drake's vessel, wandered about in search of him for a time and then sailed for England, where her captain was disgraced for having abandoned his commander. Drake was driven from the Bay of Parting of Friends, as he named the spot in which he lost sight of the Elizabeth, and was swept southward to the coast of Terra del Fuego, where he was forced from his anchorage and obliged to abandon the pinnace, with eight men in it and one day's provisions, to the mercy of the winds.The miseries endured by these eight men are hardly equalled in the annals of maritime disaster. They gained the shore, salted and dried penguins for food, and coasted on till they reached the Plata. Six of them landed, and, of these six, four were taken prisoners by the Indians. The other two were wounded in attempting to escape to the boat, as were the two who were left in charge. These four succeeded in reaching an island nine miles from the coast, where two of them died of their wounds. The other two lived for two months upon crabs and eels, and a fruit resembling an orange, which was the only means they had of quenching their thirst. One night their boat was dashed to pieces against the rocks. Unable longer to endure the want of water, they attempted to paddle to land upon a plank ten feet long. This was the laborious work of three days and two nights. They found a rivulet of fresh water; and one of them, William Pitcher, unable to resist the temptation of drinking to excess, died of its effects in half an hour. His companion was held in captivity for nine years by the Indians, when he was permitted to return to England.Drake, after the loss of the pinnace, was driven again to thesouthward, and, in the quaint language of the times, "fell in with the uttermost part of the land towards the South Pole, where the Atlantic Ocean and the South Sea meet in a large and free scope." He saw the cape since called Cape Horn, and anchored there: he gave the name of Elizabethides to all the islands lying in the neighborhood. As he neither doubled nor named this cape, it remained for the daring navigators Schouten and Lemaire to demonstrate its importance, by passing around it from one ocean into the other, which Drake, it will be observed, had not done. He went ashore, however, and, leaning over a rock which extended the farthest into the sea, returned to the ship and told the crew that he had been farther south than any man living. He anchored at the island of Mocha on the 29th of November, having coasted for four weeks to the northward along the South American shore. He landed with ten men, and was attacked by the Indians, who took them for Spaniards. Two of his men were killed, all of them disabled, and he himself badly wounded with an arrow under the right eye. Not one of the assailants was hurt. Drake made no attempt to take vengeance for this unprovoked attack, as it was evident it was begun under the mistaken idea that they were Spaniards, whose atrocities had made every native of the country their enemy. He sailed for Peru on the same day.Early in December he learned, from an Indian who was found fishing in his canoe, that he had passed twenty miles beyond the port of Valhario,—now Valparaiso; and that in this port lay a Spanish ship well laden. Drake sailed for this place, where he found the ship riding at anchor, with eight Spaniards and three negroes on board. These, taking the new-comers for friends,—for the Spaniards had never yet seen an enemy in this ocean,—welcomed them with drum and trumpet, and opened a jar of Chili wine in which to drink their health. Thomas Moore, the former captain of the Christopher pinnace, was the first to board the unsuspecting craft. He laid lustilyabout him, upon which the principal Spaniard crossed himself and jumped overboard. The rest were easily secured under the hatches. The prize was rifled, and one thousand seven hundred and seventy jars of Chili wine, sixty thousand pieces of gold, and a number of strings of pearls, were taken from her. The miserable town, consisting of nine families, who at once fled to the interior, was next ransacked. A poor little church was robbed of a silver chalice, two cruets, and a cloth with which the altar was spread. A warehouse was forced to disgorge its store of Chili wine and cedar planks. Thus did Drake, armed with the sanction of Elizabeth, Queen of England, plunder a handful of inoffensive men securely anchored in a peaceful roadstead, who saluted their coming with music and with wine. Thus did Drake commit sacrilege in a Christian church, and furnish the mess-room of his ship from the spoils of a Catholic altar. Even Southey admits that, in this affair, Drake deserves no other name than that of pirate. And we shall see that he deserved it equally well throughout his stay upon the coast.SEA ANEMONES.CHAPTER XXVII.DRAKE'S EXPLOIT WITH A SLEEPING SPANIARD—HIS ACHIEVEMENTS AT CALLAO—BATTLE WITH A TREASURE-SHIP—DRAKE GIVES A RECEIPT FOR HER CARGO—INDITES A TOUCHING EPISTLE—HIS PLANS FOR RETURNING HOME—FRESH CAPTURES—PERFORMANCES AT GUATULCO AND ACAPULCO—DRAKE DISMISSES HIS PILOT—EXCEEDING COLD WEATHER—DRAKE REGARDED AS A GOD BY THE CALIFORNIANS—SAILS FOR THE MOLUCCAS—VISITS TERNATE AND CELEBES—THE PELICAN UPON A REEF—THE RETURN VOYAGE—PROTEST OF THE SPANISH AMBASSADOR—HE STYLES DRAKE THE MASTER-THIEF OF THE UNKNOWN WORLD—QUEEN ELIZABETH ON BOARD THE PELICAN—DRAKE'S USE OF HIS FORTUNE—HIS DEATH—THE VOYAGE OF JOHN DAVIS TO THE NORTHWEST.A fortnight after leaving Valparaiso, Drake anchored at the mouth of the Coquimbo. The watering party sent ashore had barely time to escape from a body of five hundred horse and foot. At another place, called Tarapaca, the waterers found a Spaniard lying asleep, and took from him thirteen bars of silver of the value of four thousand ducats. Southey states, as if it were a trait of magnanimity, that no personal injury was offered to the sleeping man. They next captured eight lamas, each carrying a hundred pounds of silver. At Arica they found two ships at anchor, a single negro being on board of each: from the one they took forty bars of silver, and from the other two hundred jars of wine. As the Pelican was more than a match for the two negroes, the latter wisely offered no resistance. Drake arrived at Callao, the port of Lima,—Lima being the capital of Peru,—before it was known that an enemy's ship had entered the waters of the Pacific. He immediately boarded a bark laden with silk, which he consented to leave unmolested on conditionthat the owner would pilot him into Callao, which he did. Here Drake found seventeen ships, twelve of which had sent their sails ashore, so that they were as helpless as logs. He rifled them of their silver, silk, and linen, and then cut their cables and let them drift out to sea. Learning that a richly-laden treasure-ship, named the Cacafuego, had lately sailed for Paita, he at once gave chase. He stopped a vessel bound for Callao; and such was his thirst for gain, that he took from it a small silver lamp, the only article of value on board. In a ship bound to Panama he found forty bars of silver, eighty pounds of gold, and a golden crucifix set with large emeralds. Soon after crossing the line, the Cacafuego was discovered ten miles to seaward, by Drake's brother John. The Pelican's sailing qualities were now improved by what Sylva, the pilot, calls a "pretty device." Empty jars were filled with water and hung with ropes over the stern, in order to lighten her bow. The Spaniard, not dreaming of an enemy, made towards her, whereupon Drake gave her three broadsides, shot her mainmast overboard, and wounded her captain. She then surrendered. Drake took possession, sailed with her two days and two nights from the coast, and then lay to to rifle her. He took from her an immense quantity of pearls and precious stones, eighty pounds of gold, twenty-six tons of silver in ingots, a large portion of which belonged to the king, and thirteen boxes of coined silver. The value of this prize was not far from one million of dollars. Then, as if he had been engaged in a legal commercial transaction, Drake asked the captain for his register of the cargo, and wrote a receipt in the margin for the whole amount!The prize, thus lightened of her metallic cargo, was then allowed to depart. Her captain received from Drake a letter of safe conduct in case he should fall in with the Elizabeth or the Mary. This letter is remarkable for its deep and touching piety. After recommending the despoiled captain to the friendly notice of Winter and Thomas, Drake concludes thus:—"I commit youall to the tuition of Him that with his blood hath redeemed us, and am in good hope that we shall be in no more trouble, but that he will help us in adversity; desiring you, for the passion of Christ, if you fall into any danger, that you will not despair of God's mercy, for he will defend you and preserve you from all peril, and bring us to our desired haven: to whom be all honor, and praise, and glory, forever and ever. Amen."Your sorrowful captain,Whose heart is heavy for you,Francis Drake."Drake now considered his object in these seas as accomplished: the indignities offered by the Spaniards to his queen and country were avenged, and their commerce was well-nigh annihilated. He next examined the various plans of returning home with his booty. He thought it impossible to go back by the way he had come: the whole coast of Chili and Peru was in alarm, and ships had undoubtedly been despatched to intercept him. Moreover, the season (for it was now February, 1579) was unfavorable either for passing the Strait or for doubling the Cape. He might have followed the course of Magellan, and thus have circumnavigated the globe; but this seemed but a paltry imitation to his daring and inventive mind. He conceived the idea of discovering a Northwest Passage and returning to England by the North Polar Sea. He therefore sailed towards the north, making the coast of Nicaragua in the middle of March. Here he captured a small craft laden with sarsaparilla, butter, and honey. A neighboring island supplied him with wood and fish: alligators and monkeys also abounded there. A vessel from Manilla, which he captured while her crew were asleep, contributed to his stores large quantities of muslin, Chinese porcelain, and silks. A negro taken from this vessel piloted him into the haven of Guatulco, on the coast of Mexico, inhabited by seventeen Spaniards and a few negroes. Drake ransacked this place, but boasts of no other booty than a bushel of silver coins and a gold chain that ThomasMoon took from the person of the escaping governor. At Acapulco he found a few Spaniards engaged in trying and condemning a parcel of the unhappy natives. He broke up the court, and sent both judges and prisoners on board his vessel.DRAKE INTERRUPTING THE COURSE OF JUSTICE AT ACAPULCO.Before leaving Acapulco, Drake put the pilot, Nuno da Sylva, whom he had taken at the Cape Verds, on board a ship in the harbor, to find his way back to Portugal as best he could. He then sailed four thousand five hundred miles in various directions, till he found himself in a piercingly cold climate, where the meat froze as soon as it was removed from the fire. This was in latitude forty-eight north. So he sailed back again ten degrees and anchored in an excellent harbor on the California coast. This harbor is considered by numerous authorities as the present Bay of San Francisco. The natives, who had been visited but once by Europeans,—under the Portuguese Cabrillo, thirty-seven years before,—had not learned to distrust them, and readily entered into relations of commerce and amity with Drake's party. From the Indians the latter obtained quantities of an herb which they calledtabak, and which was undoubtedly tobacco. The Californians soon came to regard the strangers as gods, and did them religious honors. The king resigned to Drake all title to the surrounding country, and offered to become his subject. So he took possession of the crown and dignity of the said territory in the name and for the use of her majesty the queen. The Californians, we are told, accompanied this act of surrenderwith a song and dance of triumph, "because they were not only visited of gods, but the great and chief god was now become their god, their king and patron, and themselves the only happy and blessed people in all the world." Drake named the country New Albion, in honor of Old Albion or England. He set up a monument of the queen's "right and title to the same, namely, a plate nailed upon a fair great post, whereon was engraved her majesty's name, with the day and year of arrival." After remaining five weeks in the harbor, Drake weighed anchor, on the 23d of July, resolved to abandon any further attempt in northern latitudes, and to steer for the Moluccas, after the example of Magellan.On the 13th of October he discovered several islands in latitude eight degrees north, and was soon surrounded with canoes laden with cocoanuts and fruit. These canoes were hollowed out of a single log with wonderful art, and were as smooth as polished horn, and decorated throughout with shells thickly set. The ears of the natives hung down considerably from the weight of the ornaments worn in them. Their nails were long and sharp, and were evidently used as a weapon. Their teeth were black as jet,—an effect obtained by the use of the betel-root. These people were friendly and commercially inclined. Drake visited other groups, where the principal occupation of the natives was selling cinnamon to the Portuguese. At Ternate, one of the Moluccas, the king offered the sovereignty of the isles to Drake, and sent him presents of "imperfect and liquid sugar,"—molasses, probably,—"rice, poultry, cloves, and meal which they called sagu, or bread made of the tops of certain trees, tasting in the mouth like sour curds, but melting like sugar, whereof they made certain cakes which may be kept the space of ten years, and yet then good to be eaten." Drake stayed here six days, laid in a large stock of cloves, and sailed on the 9th of November. At a small island near Celebes, where he set up his forge and caused the ship to be carefully repaired, he and his men sawsights which they have described in somewhat exaggerated terms:—"tall trees without branches except a tuft at the very top, in which swarms of fiery worms, flying in the air, made a show as if every twig had been a burning candle; bats bigger than large hens,—a very ugly poultry; cray-fish, or land-crabs, one of which was enough for four men, and which dug huge caves under the roots of trees, or, for want of better refuge, would climb trees and hide in the forks of the branches." This spot was appropriately named Crab Island.On the 9th of January, 1580, the ship ran upon a rocky shoal and stuck fast. The crew were first summoned to prayers, and then ordered to lighten the ship. Three tons of cloves were thrown over, eight guns, and a quantity of meal and pulse. One authority says distinctly that no gold or silver was thrown into the water, though it was the heaviest part of the cargo; another authority asserts the contrary in the following passage:—"Conceiving that the best way to lighten the ship was to ease their consciences, they humbled themselves by fasting, afterwards dining on Christ in the sacrament, expecting no other than to sup with him in heaven. Then they cast out of their ship six great pieces of ordnance, threw overboard as much wealth as would break the heart of a miser to think of it, with much sugar and packs of spices, making a caudle of the sea round about." The ship was at last freed, and started again on her way. Her adventures from this point offer no very salient features: she stopped at Java, the Cape of Good Hope, and Sierra Leone. In the latter place Drake saw troops of elephants, and oysters fastened on to the twigs of trees and hanging down into the water in strings.Drake arrived at Plymouth after a voyage of two years and ten months. Like Magellan, he found he had lost a day in his reckoning. He immediately repaired to court, where he was graciously received, his treasure, however, being placed in sequestration, to answer such demands as might be made, upon it.Drake was denounced in many quarters as a pirate, while in others collections of songs and epigrams were made, celebrating him and his ship in the highest terms. The Spanish ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza, who called him the Master-Thief of the Unknown World, demanded that he should be punished according to the laws of nations. Elizabeth firmly asserted her right of navigating the ocean in all parts, and denied that the Pope's grant of a monopoly in the Indies to the Spaniards and Portuguese was of any binding effect upon her. She yielded, however, so far as to restore, to the agent of several of the merchants whom Drake had despoiled, large sums of money. Enough remained, however, to make the expedition a remunerating one for the captors. The queen then, in a pompous and solemn ceremony, gave to the entire affair an official and governmental ratification. She ordered Drake's ship to be drawn up in a little creek near Deptford, to be there preserved as a monument of the most memorable voyage the English had ever yet performed. She went on board of her, and partook of a banquet there with the commander, who, kneeling at her feet, rose up Sir Francis Drake. The Westminster students inscribed a Latin quatrain upon the mainmast, of which the following lines are a translation:"Sir Drake, whom well the world's end knows, which thou didst compass round,And whom both poles of heaven saw—which north and south do bound,—The stars above will make thee known, if men here silent were:The sun himself cannot forget his fellow-traveller."The ship remained at Deptford till she decayed and fell to pieces: a chair was made from one of her planks and presented to the University of Oxford, where it is still to be seen.QUEEN ELIZABETH KNIGHTING DRAKE.Such was the first voyage around the world accomplished by an Englishman. Drake's success awakened the spirit and genius of navigation in the English people, and may be said to have contributed in no slight degree to the naval supremacy they afterwards acquired. If, in accordance with the manner of the times, he was quite as much a pirate as a navigator, and mingled plunder and piety, prayer and pillage, in pretty equal proportions, and is to be judged accordingly, he at least made a noble use of the fortune he had acquired, in aiding the queen in her wars with Spain, and in encouraging the construction of public works. He built, with his own resources, an aqueduct twenty miles in length, with which to supply Plymouth with water. He died at sea, while commanding an expedition against the Spanish West India Islands. He wrote no account of his adventures and discoveries. A volume published by Nuno da Sylva, his Portuguese pilot, whose statements were confirmed by the officers, has served as the basis of the various narratives in existence.We may briefly allude here to an attempt made in 1585, under the auspices of the English Government, by John Davis, a seaman of acknowledged ability, with two ships,—the Sunshine and Moonshine,—to discover the Northwest Passage. After a voyage of six weeks, he saw, in north latitude 60°, a mountainous and ice-bound promontory. It was the southwestern point of Greenland, and he gave it the name of Cape Desolation, which it still retains. He now sailed to the northwest, discovered islands, coasts, and harbors, to which he gave appropriate appellations. He thus was the first to enter the strait which bears his name, and beyond which Baffin, thirty years later, was to discover the vast bay which, in its turn, was to bear his name. Davis made two subsequent voyages to these waters in search of a passage across the continent, but, with the exception of the discovery of Davis' Strait, effected nothing which needs to be chronicled here. This single discovery, however, was one of the utmost importance, as it served to stimulate research and to encourage further effort in this direction. More than two centuries were nevertheless destined to elapse before success was to be attained.BRITISH SHIP OF WAR OF 1578 FROM TAPESTRY IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.CHAPTER XXVIII.POLICY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH—THOMAS CAVENDISH—HIS FIRST VOYAGE—EXPLOITS UPON THE AFRICAN AND BRAZILIAN COASTS—PORT DESIRE—PORT FAMINE—BATTLES WITH THE ARAUCANIANS—CAPTURE OF PAITA—ROBBERY OF A CHURCH—REPEATED ACTS OF BRIGANDAGE—CAPTURE OF THE SANTA ANNA—THE RETURN VOYAGE—CAVENDISH'S ACCOUNT OF THE EXPEDITION—THE SPANISH ARMADA—PREPARATIONS IN ENGLAND—THE CONFLICT—TOTAL ROUT OF THE INVINCIBLES—PROCESSION IN COMMEMORATION OF THE EVENT.Queen Elizabeth had found it to her advantage to encourage displays of public spirit in private individuals, and to excite the nobles and persons of fortune who were ambitious of distinction, as well as the indigent in search of employment, to hazard, the one their wealth, the other their lives, in the national service. She thus derived benefit from a class of peoplewho had been of little use in any other reign. Many gentlemen of rank and position devoted a portion of their means to harassing the Spanish at sea, to prosecuting discovery in distant quarters, and to planting colonies upon savage coasts. Among the most distinguished of these was Thomas Cavendish, of Trimley, near Ipswich.CAVENDISH IN BRAZIL.This gentleman was of an honorable family, and possessed a large estate. He equipped, in 1586, three ships of the requisite burden,—the largest, the Desire, being of one hundred and forty tons, the lesser, the Content, being of sixty, and the least, the Hugh Gallant, a bark of forty tons. He provisioned them for two years, and manned them with one hundred and twenty-three officers and men, some of whom had served under Sir Francis Drake. His patron, Lord Hunsdon, procured him a commission from Queen Elizabeth, thus assimilating his vessels to those of the navy, and rendering his contemplated piracies legitimate. Cavendish sailed from Plymouth on the 21st of July, directing his course to the south and touching upon the coasts of Guinea and Sierra Leone. Here the crew destroyed a negro town, in revenge for the death of one of their men, whom the inhabitants had killed with a poisoned arrow. Their course across the Atlantic to the Brazilian shore offers no remarkable features. They erected their forge upon an island, where they healed their sick and built a pinnace. Anchoring in a harbor on the Patagonian coast, Cavendish named it Port Desire, afterhis flag-ship,—a name which it still retains. He seems to have considered the savages to be giants, and asserts that he saw footprints eighteen inches long. He entered the Strait at the commencement of January, 1587, and soon discovered a miserable and forlorn settlement of Spaniards. These numbered twenty-three men, being all that remained of four hundred who had been left there three years before, by Sarmiento, to colonize the Strait. They had lived in destitution for the last eighteen months, being able to procure no other food than a scanty supply of shell-fish, except when they surprised a thirsty deer or seized an unsuspecting swan. They had built a fortress, in order to exclude all other nations but their own from the passage of the Strait, but had been compelled to leave it, owing to the intolerable stench proceeding from the carcasses of their unhappy companions who died of want or disease. Cavendish took the survivors on board, and named the spot upon which the fortress was built Port Famine.PORT FAMINE.Cavendish entered the Pacific late in February, after a tempestuous passage from the Atlantic side. Landing upon the Chilian coast, in the country of the Araucanians, he received a warm reception from the natives, who mistook his men for Spaniards, by whom the territory had been repeatedly invaded in search of gold. He afterwards undeceived them, and found them willing to satisfy his wants when convinced that they did not belong to that avaricious and cruel people. In anotherplace, inhabited by a Spanish colony, he fought a pitched battle with two hundred horsemen, driving those who were not slain back to the mountains. At another spot farther north, the Indians brought him wood and water on their backs. In May he captured two prizes, taking out of them twenty thousand pounds' worth of sugar, molasses, calico, marmalade, and hens, and then burning them to the water's edge. He seized upon the town of Paita, which he ransacked and burned, carrying off a large quantity of household goods and twenty-five pounds' weight of pieces-of-eight, or Spanish dollars. Off the island of Puna he fell in with a ship of two hundred and fifty tons; but, being disappointed at finding her empty, he sank her out of sheer spite. The inhabitants of Puna were Christians, having followed the example of their cacique, who had married a Spanish woman and had thereupon made a profession of her religion. They were rich and industrious. Cavendish pillaged the island, burned the church, and carried off its five bells. Being attacked by the Spaniards and natives combined, he fought a long and bloody battle, after which he ravaged the fields and orchards, burned four ships on the stocks, and left the town of three hundred houses a heap of rubbish. He took a coasting-ship, rifled and scuttled her, and compelled her captain to become his pilot. He continued this course of brigandage and piracy all along the South American and Mexican coasts, destroying towns, pillaging custom-houses, and burning vessels.Early in November, Cavendish, who had been told by the pilot he had taken that a vessel from the Philippines was expected, richly laden, at Acapulco, lay in wait for her off the headland of California. She was discovered on the 4th, bearing in for the Cape. She was the Santa Anna, of seven hundred tons, belonging to the King of Spain, and commanded by the Admiral of the South Sea. Cavendish gave chase, and, after a broadside and a volley of small-arms, boarded her. He was repulsed, but renewed the action with his guns and musketry.The Spaniard was soon forced to surrender, and her officers, going on board the Desire, gave an account of her contents,—which they stated at thirty thousand dollars in gold, with immense quantities of damasks, silks, satins, musk, and provisions. This glorious prize was divided by Cavendish, a mutiny being very nearly the result: it was, however, prevented by the generosity of the commander. The prisoners were set on shore with sufficient means of defence against the Indians; the Santa Anna was burned, together with five hundred tons of her goods; and Cavendish then set sail for the Ladrone Islands, five thousand five hundred miles distant.He arrived at Guam, one of the group, in forty-five days, and from thence prosecuted his homeward voyage, through the Philippine Islands and the Moluccas, to Java. He passed the months of April and May, 1588, in crossing the Indian Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope. He touched at St. Helena early in June, and, when near the Azores, in September, heard from a Flemish ship the news of the total defeat of the great Spanish Armada. He lost nearly all his sails in a storm off Finisterre, and replaced them by sails of silken grass, which he had taken from his prizes in the South Sea. The voyage of Cavendish was the third that had been performed round the world, and was the shortest of the three,—being accomplished in eight months' less time than that of Drake.Cavendish at once wrote a letter to Lord Hunsdon, in which occurs the following brief relation of his achievements:—"It hath pleased the Almighty to suffer me to encompass all the whole globe of the world. I navigated along the coasts of Chili, Peru, and New Spain, where I made great spoils. I burned and sank nineteen sail of ships, great and small. All the towns and cities that ever I landed at I burned and spoiled, and, had I not been discovered upon the coast, I had taken a great quantity of treasure.... All which services, together with myself, I humbly prostrate at her majesty's feet, desiringthe Almighty long to continue her reign among us; for at this day she is the most famous and victorious prince that liveth in the world. Thus, humbly desiring pardon for my tediousness, I leave your lordship to the tuition of the Almighty."Cavendish spent his immense wealth in equipping vessels for a second voyage, which ended disastrously, and in which, after being beaten by the Portuguese off the coast of Brazil, he died of shame and grief. He ranks as one of the most enterprising, diligent, and cautious of the early English navigators, though, of course, he must be regarded as an arrant buccaneer.From what we have said of the piracies of the English, and of their encroachments upon the domain of the Spanish, and of the ardent desire of the latter to retain the monopoly of the trade with the natives of America and to hold the exclusive right to rob and slay them at their pleasure, the reader will be prepared for the imposing but bombastic attempt made by Spain against England in 1588. Philip II. determined to put forth his strength, and his fleet was named, before it sailed, "The most Fortunate and Invincible Armada." It was described in official accounts as consisting of one hundred and thirty ships, manned by eight thousand four hundred and fifty sailors, and carrying nineteen thousand soldiers, two thousand galley-slaves, and two thousand six hundred pieces of brass. The vessels were named from Romish saints, from the various appellations of the Trinity, from animals and fabulous monsters,—the Santa Catilina, the Great Griffin, and the Holy Ghost being profanely intermixed. In the fleet were one hundred and twenty-four volunteers of noble family, and one hundred and eighty almoners, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits. Instruments of torture were placed on board in large quantities, for the purpose of assisting in the great work of reconciling England to Romanism. The Spaniards and the Pope had resolved that all who should defend the queen and withstand the invasion should, with all their families, be rooted out, and their places, their honors,their titles, their houses, and their lands, be bestowed upon the conquerors.Elizabeth and her councillors heard these ominous denunciations undismayed, and adequate preparations were made to receive the crusaders. London alone furnished ten thousand men, and held ten thousand more in reserve: the whole land-force amounted to sixty-five thousand. The fleet numbered one hundred and eighty-one vessels,—fifty more in number than the Armada, but hardly half as powerful in tonnage. Eighteen of these vessels were volunteers, and but one of the one hundred and eighty-one was of the burden of eleven hundred tons. The Lord High-Admiral of England, Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham, commanded the fleet, with Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher in command of the various divisions. A form of prayer was published, and the clergy were enjoined to read it on Wednesdays and Fridays in their parish churches. In this, Elizabeth was compared to Deborah, preparing to combat the pride and might of Sisera-Philip. The country awaited the arrival of the Spaniards in anxiety, and yet with confidence.HULL OF A VESSEL OF THE ARMADA.The Armada sailed from the Tagus late in May, with the solemn blessing of the Church, and patronized by every influential saint in the calendar. A storm drove it back with loss, and it did not sail again till the 12th of July. It was descried off Plymouth on the 20th, "with lofty turrets like castles, in front like a half-moon; the wings thereof spreading out about thelength of seven miles, sailing very slowly, though with full sails, the winds being as it were weary with wafting them, and the ocean groaning under their weight." The English suffered them to pass Plymouth, that they might attack them in the rear. They commenced the fight the next day, with only forty ships. The Spaniards, during this preliminary action, found their ships "very useful to defend, but not to offend, and better fitted to stand than to move." Drake, with his usual luck, captured a galleon in which he found fifty-five thousand ducats in gold. This sum was divided among his crew. Skirmishing and detached fights continued for several days, the Spanish ships being found, from their height and thickness, inaccessible by boarding or ball. They were compared to castles pitched into the sea. The lord-admiral was consequently instructed to convert eight of his least efficient vessels into fire-ships. The order arrived as the enemy's fleet anchored off Calais, and thirty hours afterwards the eight ships selected were discharged of all that was worth removal and filled with combustibles. Their guns were heavily loaded, and their sides smeared with rosin and wild-fire. At midnight they were sent, with wind and tide, into the heart of the invincible Armada. A terrible panic seized the affrighted crews: remembering the fire-ships which had been used but lately in the Scheldt, they shouted, in agony, "The fire of Antwerp! The fire of Antwerp!" Some cut their cables, others slipped their hawsers, and all put to sea, "happiest they who could first be gone, though few could tell what course to take." Some were wrecked on the shallows of Flanders; some gained the ocean; while the remainder were attacked and terribly handled by Drake. The discomfited Spaniards resolved to return to Spain by a northern circuit around England and Scotland. The English pursued, but the exhausted state of their powder-magazines prevented another engagement. The luckless Armada never returned to Spain. A terrific storm drove the vessels upon the Irish coast and upon the inhospitable rocks of theOrkneys. Thirty of them were stranded near Connaught: two had been cast away upon the shores of Norway. In all, eighty-one ships were lost, and but fifty-three reached home. Out of thirty thousand soldiers embarked, fourteen thousand were missing. Philip received the calamity as a dispensation of Providence, and ordered thanks to be given to God that the disaster was no greater.PROCESSION IN HONOR OF THE DEFEAT OF THE ARMADA.A day of thanksgiving was proclaimed in England, inasmuch as "the boar had put back that sought to lay her vineyard waste." Some time afterwards, the queen repaired in public procession to St. Paul's. The streets were hung with blue cloth; the royal chariot was a throne with four pillars and a canopy overhead, drawn by white horses. Elizabeth knelt at the altar and audibly acknowledged the Almighty as her deliverer from the rage of the enemy. The people were exhorted to render thanks to the Most High, whose elements—fire, wind, and storm—had wrought more destruction to the foe than the valor of their navy or the strength of their wooden walls.
FRANCIS DRAKE.CHAPTER XXVI.ORIGIN OF ENGLISH PIRACY—SIR JOHN HAWKINS—FRANCIS DRAKE—HIS FIRST VOYAGE TO THE SPANISH MAIN—COMMISSION GRANTED BY QUEEN ELIZABETH—EXPEDITION AGAINST THE SPANISH POSSESSIONS—EXPLOITS AT MOGADOR AND SANTIAGO—CROSSING THE LINE—ARRIVAL IN PATAGONIA—TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF DOUGHTY—PASSAGE THROUGH MAGELLAN'S STRAIT—ADVENTURES OF WILLIAM PITCHER AND SEVEN MEN—CAPE HORN—ARRIVAL AT VALPARAISO—RIFLING OF A CATHOLIC CHURCH.We have thus shown that, while the Spanish and Portuguese had succeeded triumphantly in their maritime expeditions, the English had disastrously failed in theirs. The tropics were held in exclusive possession by the two former nations; and the only two known routes by which ships could sail thither were also in theirpower. These two nations were Catholic: England was Protestant, and disinherited therefore, as it seemed, of her lawful share in the riches of the world. She had thus far wasted her means and endangered the lives of her citizens in fruitless attempts to find a route for herself, by the northwest or the northeast, to the lands of gold and gums. Baffled in these efforts, she permitted, if she did not encourage, a certain class of her subjects to engage in a system of warfare against Spain which can be characterized by no milder term than piracy. Still, those who resorted to it adduced ready arguments to prove that, so far from engaging in piratical practices, they were employed in open warfare and an honest cause. Spain and England were in a state of manifest enmity, they urged, more bitter on both sides than if they had been avowedly at war. No English subject trading in the Spanish dominions was safe unless he were a Roman Catholic, or unless, being a heretic, he succumbed to the menaces or the tortures of the Holy Inquisition. These outrages were resented by the English people before they were taken up by the British Government; and the injured parties, calling to their aid all persons of adventurous spirit or shattered fortunes, set out upon the sea, if not with the commission, at least with the connivance, of the crown, to avenge their wrongs themselves. They did not consider themselves to be pirates, because of this tacit sanction given by the Government, because of the fact that they carried on hostilities, not against all who traversed the sea, but against the Spaniards only, and because of the risk they ran,—for if taken by the enemy they had no mercy to expect. It thus became the fashion in England for men of desperate fortunes and damaged character to seek to retrieve the one and redeem the other by cruising against the Spaniards.Among the earlier adventurers of this stamp was one Sir John Hawkins. His exploits were for a time brilliant and successful: at last, however, they were disastrous, and one of hisyoung kinsmen, Francis Drake by name, was discreditably involved. The latter had embarked his whole means in this adventure, and lost in it all his money and no little reputation,—for he disobeyed orders and deserted his benefactor and superior in the hour of need. He brought his vessel,—the Judith, of fifty tons,—however, safely home.Drake now resolved to engage permanently in the lawless but exciting career of which he had lately witnessed several interesting episodes. It was long before he could obtain the means of fitting out an expedition under his own command. He at last bought and equipped two vessels,—one of two hundred and fifty tons, the other of seventy,—manned them with seventy-three men, and sailed for the Spanish dominions in America. He attacked and took the town of Nombre de Dios, on the Isthmus of Darien, but was soon obliged to retreat. He afterwards took Venta Cruz, on the same isthmus, and had the good fortune to fall in with three convoys of mules laden with gold and silver, going from Panama to Nombre de Dios. He carried off the gold and buried the silver. From the summit of a mountain he obtained a sight of the Pacific Ocean or South Sea, which so kindled his enthusiasm that he uttered a fervent prayer that he might be the first Englishman who should sail upon it. He was already the first Englishman who had beheld it.On his return to England with his treasure, he entered for a time the volunteer service against Ireland, while waiting an opportunity to execute the grand project he had formed. At last, Sir Christopher Hutton, Vice-Chamberlain and Counsellor of the Queen, presented him to Elizabeth, to whom Drake imparted his scheme of ravaging the Spanish possessions in the South Sea. The queen listened; but whether she gave him a commission, or merely assured him of her favorable sentiments, is a disputed point. It is alleged that she gave him a sword and pronounced these singular words:—"We do account that he which striketh at thee, Drake, striketh at us!" He fitted outan expedition, at his own cost and with the help of friends and partners in the enterprise, consisting of five ships,—the largest, the Pelican, his flag-ship, of one hundred tons, and the smallest of fifteen. These vessels were manned by one hundred and fifty-four men. They carried out the frames of four pinnaces, to be put together as occasion required, and, after the example of the Portuguese in their first Eastern voyages, took with them specimens of the arts and civilization of their country, with which to operate upon the minds of the people with whom they should come in contact. They sailed in November, 1577, but were driven back by a tempest. The expedition finally got to sea on the 13th of December.At the island of Mogador, off the coast of Barbary, Drake attempted to traffic with the Moors, and in an exchange of hostages lost a man, who was taken by the natives: they then refused to trade, and Drake, after a vain effort to recover the sailor, left the island, and followed the African coast to the southward. Between Mogador and Cape Blanco he took several Spanish barks called canters,—one of which, measuring forty tons, he admitted into his fleet, sending his prisoners off in the Christopher, the pinnace of fifteen tons and one of the original five vessels. He landed on the island of Mayo, where the inhabitants salted their wells, forsook their houses, and drove away their goats. Off the island of Santiago he took a Portuguese vessel bound for Brazil, carrying numerous passengers and laden with wine. He kept the pilot, Nuno da Sylva, gave the passengers and crew a pinnace, and transferred the wine to the Pelican. The prize he made one of the fleet, having given her a crew of twenty-eight men.At Cape Verd Drake left the African shore, and, steering steadily to the southwest, was nine weeks without seeing land. When near the equator, he prepared his men for the change of climate by bleeding them all himself. He made the coast of Brazil on the 4th of April, 1578,—the savage inhabitantsmaking large bonfires at their approach, for the purpose, as he learned from Sylva, of inducing their devils to wreck the ships upon their coast. On the 27th he entered the Rio de la Plata, and, sailing up the stream till he found but three fathoms' water, filled his casks by the ship's side. The same night, the Portuguese prize, now named the Mary, and commanded by John Doughty, parted company, as did two days afterwards the Spanish canter, which had been named the Christopher, after the pinnace for which she had been exchanged. Drake, believing them to have concealed themselves in shoal water, built a raft and set sail in quest of them.DRAKE AND HIS RAFT.Early in June, Drake landed on the coast of Patagonia, where he broke up the Swan, of fifty tons, for firewood, having taken every thing out of her which could be of any use,—his object being to lessen the number of ships and the chances of separation, and to render his force more compact. His men easily killed two hundred and fifty seals in an hour, which furnished them with very tolerable eating. They entered into very pleasant relations with the natives, delighting them with the sound of their trumpets, intoxicating them with Canary wine, and dancing with them in their own savage and extravagant manner. The natives gave Drake a vexatious proof of their agility and address, by stealing his hat from his head and baffling every effort made to recover it. Shortly after sailing from thisspot, named by Drake Seal Bay, the fleet fell in with the Christopher again, which Drake ordered to be unloaded and set adrift. He soon met the Portuguese Mary, and on the 20th the whole squadron anchored in the harbor named Port Julian by Magellan. Intercourse was attempted with the Indians, but was stopped on account of a fray begun by the savages, in which two of the English and one of their own party were killed. The natives made no further attempt to molest the strangers during their two months' stay in the harbor.DRAKE AND THE PATAGONIANS.A very tragical event now followed. Magellan had in this place, as we have stated, quelled a dangerous mutiny, by hanging several of a disobedient and rebellious company. The gibbet was still standing, and beneath it the bones of the executed were now bleaching. Drake apprehended a similar peril, and was led to inquire into the actions of John Doughty. He found, in his investigations, that Doughty had embarked in the enterprise rather in the hope of rising to the chief command than of remaining what he started,—a gentleman volunteer: he had views,it seemed, of supplanting Drake by exciting a mutiny, and of sailing off in one of the ships upon his own account. The company were called together and made acquainted with the particulars; Doughty was tried for attempting to foment a mutiny, found guilty, and condemned to death by forty commissaries chosen from among the various crews. Doughty partook of the communion with Drake and several of his officers, dined at the same table with them, and, in the last glass of wine he ever raised to his lips, drank their healths and wished them farewell. He walked to the place of execution without displaying unusual emotion, embraced the general, took leave of the company, offered up a prayer for the queen and her realm, and was then beheaded near Magellan's gibbet. Drake addressed the company, exhorting them to unity and obedience, and ordered them to prepare to receive the holy communion on the following Sabbath, the first Sunday in the month.DRAKE CONDEMNING DOUGHTY.This tragedy has been embellished by many fanciful additions on the part of Drake's apologists, and upon the part of his calumniators by many false statements. It is said by the former that Drake, after Doughty's condemnation, offered him the choice of three alternatives,—either to be executed in Patagonia, to be set ashore and left, or to be sent back to England, there to answer for his acts before the Lords of her Majesty's Council; and that Doughty replied that he would notendanger his soul by being left among savage infidels; that, as for returning to England, if any one could be found willing to accompany him on so disgraceful an errand, the shame of the return would be more grievous than death; that he therefore preferred ending his life where he was,—a choice from which no argument could persuade him. These assertions can hardly be correct, as nothing of the kind is set forth in the account of the voyage given by Fletcher, the chaplain of the expedition. It is highly improbable that Doughty, if conscious of innocence, would have rejected the offer of a trial in England; while it is unlikely that the offer was ever made, as Drake could ill spare a ship in which to send the prisoner home. Different opinions are held in the matter by different writers. Admiral Burney thought the statements too imperfect for forming, and the whole matter too delicate to express, an opinion. Dr. Johnson wrote thus on the subject:—"What designs Doughty could have formed with any hope of success, or to what actions worthy of death he could have proceeded without accomplices, it is difficult to imagine. Nor, on the other hand, does there appear any temptation, from either hope, fear, or interest, that might induce Drake, or any commander in his state, to put to death an innocent man on false pretences." Southey, in his Lives of the Admirals, is disposed to consider Drake as justified in making a severe example. Harris is of opinion that the act was "the most rash and blameworthy of the admiral's career." Sylva, Drake's Portuguese pilot, once said that Doughty was punished for attempting to abandon the expedition and return to England, and thus evidently thought that a sufficient motive existed for his execution. And it is worth remarking that the Spaniards, who never neglected an opportunity of loading Drake with obloquy, extolled him in this case for his vigilance and decision. Doughty was buried on an island in the harbor, together with the bodies of the two men slain in the fray with the savages.The Portuguese prize, being now found leaky and troublesome,was broken up, the fleet being thus reduced to three. On the 21st of August, Drake entered Magellan's Strait,—being the second commander who ever performed the voyage through it. He cleared the channel in sixteen days, and entered the South Sea on the 6th of September. Here the Marygold was lost in a terrible storm, and the Elizabeth, being separated from Drake's vessel, wandered about in search of him for a time and then sailed for England, where her captain was disgraced for having abandoned his commander. Drake was driven from the Bay of Parting of Friends, as he named the spot in which he lost sight of the Elizabeth, and was swept southward to the coast of Terra del Fuego, where he was forced from his anchorage and obliged to abandon the pinnace, with eight men in it and one day's provisions, to the mercy of the winds.The miseries endured by these eight men are hardly equalled in the annals of maritime disaster. They gained the shore, salted and dried penguins for food, and coasted on till they reached the Plata. Six of them landed, and, of these six, four were taken prisoners by the Indians. The other two were wounded in attempting to escape to the boat, as were the two who were left in charge. These four succeeded in reaching an island nine miles from the coast, where two of them died of their wounds. The other two lived for two months upon crabs and eels, and a fruit resembling an orange, which was the only means they had of quenching their thirst. One night their boat was dashed to pieces against the rocks. Unable longer to endure the want of water, they attempted to paddle to land upon a plank ten feet long. This was the laborious work of three days and two nights. They found a rivulet of fresh water; and one of them, William Pitcher, unable to resist the temptation of drinking to excess, died of its effects in half an hour. His companion was held in captivity for nine years by the Indians, when he was permitted to return to England.Drake, after the loss of the pinnace, was driven again to thesouthward, and, in the quaint language of the times, "fell in with the uttermost part of the land towards the South Pole, where the Atlantic Ocean and the South Sea meet in a large and free scope." He saw the cape since called Cape Horn, and anchored there: he gave the name of Elizabethides to all the islands lying in the neighborhood. As he neither doubled nor named this cape, it remained for the daring navigators Schouten and Lemaire to demonstrate its importance, by passing around it from one ocean into the other, which Drake, it will be observed, had not done. He went ashore, however, and, leaning over a rock which extended the farthest into the sea, returned to the ship and told the crew that he had been farther south than any man living. He anchored at the island of Mocha on the 29th of November, having coasted for four weeks to the northward along the South American shore. He landed with ten men, and was attacked by the Indians, who took them for Spaniards. Two of his men were killed, all of them disabled, and he himself badly wounded with an arrow under the right eye. Not one of the assailants was hurt. Drake made no attempt to take vengeance for this unprovoked attack, as it was evident it was begun under the mistaken idea that they were Spaniards, whose atrocities had made every native of the country their enemy. He sailed for Peru on the same day.Early in December he learned, from an Indian who was found fishing in his canoe, that he had passed twenty miles beyond the port of Valhario,—now Valparaiso; and that in this port lay a Spanish ship well laden. Drake sailed for this place, where he found the ship riding at anchor, with eight Spaniards and three negroes on board. These, taking the new-comers for friends,—for the Spaniards had never yet seen an enemy in this ocean,—welcomed them with drum and trumpet, and opened a jar of Chili wine in which to drink their health. Thomas Moore, the former captain of the Christopher pinnace, was the first to board the unsuspecting craft. He laid lustilyabout him, upon which the principal Spaniard crossed himself and jumped overboard. The rest were easily secured under the hatches. The prize was rifled, and one thousand seven hundred and seventy jars of Chili wine, sixty thousand pieces of gold, and a number of strings of pearls, were taken from her. The miserable town, consisting of nine families, who at once fled to the interior, was next ransacked. A poor little church was robbed of a silver chalice, two cruets, and a cloth with which the altar was spread. A warehouse was forced to disgorge its store of Chili wine and cedar planks. Thus did Drake, armed with the sanction of Elizabeth, Queen of England, plunder a handful of inoffensive men securely anchored in a peaceful roadstead, who saluted their coming with music and with wine. Thus did Drake commit sacrilege in a Christian church, and furnish the mess-room of his ship from the spoils of a Catholic altar. Even Southey admits that, in this affair, Drake deserves no other name than that of pirate. And we shall see that he deserved it equally well throughout his stay upon the coast.SEA ANEMONES.
FRANCIS DRAKE.
FRANCIS DRAKE.
FRANCIS DRAKE.
ORIGIN OF ENGLISH PIRACY—SIR JOHN HAWKINS—FRANCIS DRAKE—HIS FIRST VOYAGE TO THE SPANISH MAIN—COMMISSION GRANTED BY QUEEN ELIZABETH—EXPEDITION AGAINST THE SPANISH POSSESSIONS—EXPLOITS AT MOGADOR AND SANTIAGO—CROSSING THE LINE—ARRIVAL IN PATAGONIA—TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF DOUGHTY—PASSAGE THROUGH MAGELLAN'S STRAIT—ADVENTURES OF WILLIAM PITCHER AND SEVEN MEN—CAPE HORN—ARRIVAL AT VALPARAISO—RIFLING OF A CATHOLIC CHURCH.
We have thus shown that, while the Spanish and Portuguese had succeeded triumphantly in their maritime expeditions, the English had disastrously failed in theirs. The tropics were held in exclusive possession by the two former nations; and the only two known routes by which ships could sail thither were also in theirpower. These two nations were Catholic: England was Protestant, and disinherited therefore, as it seemed, of her lawful share in the riches of the world. She had thus far wasted her means and endangered the lives of her citizens in fruitless attempts to find a route for herself, by the northwest or the northeast, to the lands of gold and gums. Baffled in these efforts, she permitted, if she did not encourage, a certain class of her subjects to engage in a system of warfare against Spain which can be characterized by no milder term than piracy. Still, those who resorted to it adduced ready arguments to prove that, so far from engaging in piratical practices, they were employed in open warfare and an honest cause. Spain and England were in a state of manifest enmity, they urged, more bitter on both sides than if they had been avowedly at war. No English subject trading in the Spanish dominions was safe unless he were a Roman Catholic, or unless, being a heretic, he succumbed to the menaces or the tortures of the Holy Inquisition. These outrages were resented by the English people before they were taken up by the British Government; and the injured parties, calling to their aid all persons of adventurous spirit or shattered fortunes, set out upon the sea, if not with the commission, at least with the connivance, of the crown, to avenge their wrongs themselves. They did not consider themselves to be pirates, because of this tacit sanction given by the Government, because of the fact that they carried on hostilities, not against all who traversed the sea, but against the Spaniards only, and because of the risk they ran,—for if taken by the enemy they had no mercy to expect. It thus became the fashion in England for men of desperate fortunes and damaged character to seek to retrieve the one and redeem the other by cruising against the Spaniards.
Among the earlier adventurers of this stamp was one Sir John Hawkins. His exploits were for a time brilliant and successful: at last, however, they were disastrous, and one of hisyoung kinsmen, Francis Drake by name, was discreditably involved. The latter had embarked his whole means in this adventure, and lost in it all his money and no little reputation,—for he disobeyed orders and deserted his benefactor and superior in the hour of need. He brought his vessel,—the Judith, of fifty tons,—however, safely home.
Drake now resolved to engage permanently in the lawless but exciting career of which he had lately witnessed several interesting episodes. It was long before he could obtain the means of fitting out an expedition under his own command. He at last bought and equipped two vessels,—one of two hundred and fifty tons, the other of seventy,—manned them with seventy-three men, and sailed for the Spanish dominions in America. He attacked and took the town of Nombre de Dios, on the Isthmus of Darien, but was soon obliged to retreat. He afterwards took Venta Cruz, on the same isthmus, and had the good fortune to fall in with three convoys of mules laden with gold and silver, going from Panama to Nombre de Dios. He carried off the gold and buried the silver. From the summit of a mountain he obtained a sight of the Pacific Ocean or South Sea, which so kindled his enthusiasm that he uttered a fervent prayer that he might be the first Englishman who should sail upon it. He was already the first Englishman who had beheld it.
On his return to England with his treasure, he entered for a time the volunteer service against Ireland, while waiting an opportunity to execute the grand project he had formed. At last, Sir Christopher Hutton, Vice-Chamberlain and Counsellor of the Queen, presented him to Elizabeth, to whom Drake imparted his scheme of ravaging the Spanish possessions in the South Sea. The queen listened; but whether she gave him a commission, or merely assured him of her favorable sentiments, is a disputed point. It is alleged that she gave him a sword and pronounced these singular words:—"We do account that he which striketh at thee, Drake, striketh at us!" He fitted outan expedition, at his own cost and with the help of friends and partners in the enterprise, consisting of five ships,—the largest, the Pelican, his flag-ship, of one hundred tons, and the smallest of fifteen. These vessels were manned by one hundred and fifty-four men. They carried out the frames of four pinnaces, to be put together as occasion required, and, after the example of the Portuguese in their first Eastern voyages, took with them specimens of the arts and civilization of their country, with which to operate upon the minds of the people with whom they should come in contact. They sailed in November, 1577, but were driven back by a tempest. The expedition finally got to sea on the 13th of December.
At the island of Mogador, off the coast of Barbary, Drake attempted to traffic with the Moors, and in an exchange of hostages lost a man, who was taken by the natives: they then refused to trade, and Drake, after a vain effort to recover the sailor, left the island, and followed the African coast to the southward. Between Mogador and Cape Blanco he took several Spanish barks called canters,—one of which, measuring forty tons, he admitted into his fleet, sending his prisoners off in the Christopher, the pinnace of fifteen tons and one of the original five vessels. He landed on the island of Mayo, where the inhabitants salted their wells, forsook their houses, and drove away their goats. Off the island of Santiago he took a Portuguese vessel bound for Brazil, carrying numerous passengers and laden with wine. He kept the pilot, Nuno da Sylva, gave the passengers and crew a pinnace, and transferred the wine to the Pelican. The prize he made one of the fleet, having given her a crew of twenty-eight men.
At Cape Verd Drake left the African shore, and, steering steadily to the southwest, was nine weeks without seeing land. When near the equator, he prepared his men for the change of climate by bleeding them all himself. He made the coast of Brazil on the 4th of April, 1578,—the savage inhabitantsmaking large bonfires at their approach, for the purpose, as he learned from Sylva, of inducing their devils to wreck the ships upon their coast. On the 27th he entered the Rio de la Plata, and, sailing up the stream till he found but three fathoms' water, filled his casks by the ship's side. The same night, the Portuguese prize, now named the Mary, and commanded by John Doughty, parted company, as did two days afterwards the Spanish canter, which had been named the Christopher, after the pinnace for which she had been exchanged. Drake, believing them to have concealed themselves in shoal water, built a raft and set sail in quest of them.
DRAKE AND HIS RAFT.
DRAKE AND HIS RAFT.
DRAKE AND HIS RAFT.
Early in June, Drake landed on the coast of Patagonia, where he broke up the Swan, of fifty tons, for firewood, having taken every thing out of her which could be of any use,—his object being to lessen the number of ships and the chances of separation, and to render his force more compact. His men easily killed two hundred and fifty seals in an hour, which furnished them with very tolerable eating. They entered into very pleasant relations with the natives, delighting them with the sound of their trumpets, intoxicating them with Canary wine, and dancing with them in their own savage and extravagant manner. The natives gave Drake a vexatious proof of their agility and address, by stealing his hat from his head and baffling every effort made to recover it. Shortly after sailing from thisspot, named by Drake Seal Bay, the fleet fell in with the Christopher again, which Drake ordered to be unloaded and set adrift. He soon met the Portuguese Mary, and on the 20th the whole squadron anchored in the harbor named Port Julian by Magellan. Intercourse was attempted with the Indians, but was stopped on account of a fray begun by the savages, in which two of the English and one of their own party were killed. The natives made no further attempt to molest the strangers during their two months' stay in the harbor.
DRAKE AND THE PATAGONIANS.
DRAKE AND THE PATAGONIANS.
DRAKE AND THE PATAGONIANS.
A very tragical event now followed. Magellan had in this place, as we have stated, quelled a dangerous mutiny, by hanging several of a disobedient and rebellious company. The gibbet was still standing, and beneath it the bones of the executed were now bleaching. Drake apprehended a similar peril, and was led to inquire into the actions of John Doughty. He found, in his investigations, that Doughty had embarked in the enterprise rather in the hope of rising to the chief command than of remaining what he started,—a gentleman volunteer: he had views,it seemed, of supplanting Drake by exciting a mutiny, and of sailing off in one of the ships upon his own account. The company were called together and made acquainted with the particulars; Doughty was tried for attempting to foment a mutiny, found guilty, and condemned to death by forty commissaries chosen from among the various crews. Doughty partook of the communion with Drake and several of his officers, dined at the same table with them, and, in the last glass of wine he ever raised to his lips, drank their healths and wished them farewell. He walked to the place of execution without displaying unusual emotion, embraced the general, took leave of the company, offered up a prayer for the queen and her realm, and was then beheaded near Magellan's gibbet. Drake addressed the company, exhorting them to unity and obedience, and ordered them to prepare to receive the holy communion on the following Sabbath, the first Sunday in the month.
DRAKE CONDEMNING DOUGHTY.
DRAKE CONDEMNING DOUGHTY.
DRAKE CONDEMNING DOUGHTY.
This tragedy has been embellished by many fanciful additions on the part of Drake's apologists, and upon the part of his calumniators by many false statements. It is said by the former that Drake, after Doughty's condemnation, offered him the choice of three alternatives,—either to be executed in Patagonia, to be set ashore and left, or to be sent back to England, there to answer for his acts before the Lords of her Majesty's Council; and that Doughty replied that he would notendanger his soul by being left among savage infidels; that, as for returning to England, if any one could be found willing to accompany him on so disgraceful an errand, the shame of the return would be more grievous than death; that he therefore preferred ending his life where he was,—a choice from which no argument could persuade him. These assertions can hardly be correct, as nothing of the kind is set forth in the account of the voyage given by Fletcher, the chaplain of the expedition. It is highly improbable that Doughty, if conscious of innocence, would have rejected the offer of a trial in England; while it is unlikely that the offer was ever made, as Drake could ill spare a ship in which to send the prisoner home. Different opinions are held in the matter by different writers. Admiral Burney thought the statements too imperfect for forming, and the whole matter too delicate to express, an opinion. Dr. Johnson wrote thus on the subject:—"What designs Doughty could have formed with any hope of success, or to what actions worthy of death he could have proceeded without accomplices, it is difficult to imagine. Nor, on the other hand, does there appear any temptation, from either hope, fear, or interest, that might induce Drake, or any commander in his state, to put to death an innocent man on false pretences." Southey, in his Lives of the Admirals, is disposed to consider Drake as justified in making a severe example. Harris is of opinion that the act was "the most rash and blameworthy of the admiral's career." Sylva, Drake's Portuguese pilot, once said that Doughty was punished for attempting to abandon the expedition and return to England, and thus evidently thought that a sufficient motive existed for his execution. And it is worth remarking that the Spaniards, who never neglected an opportunity of loading Drake with obloquy, extolled him in this case for his vigilance and decision. Doughty was buried on an island in the harbor, together with the bodies of the two men slain in the fray with the savages.
The Portuguese prize, being now found leaky and troublesome,was broken up, the fleet being thus reduced to three. On the 21st of August, Drake entered Magellan's Strait,—being the second commander who ever performed the voyage through it. He cleared the channel in sixteen days, and entered the South Sea on the 6th of September. Here the Marygold was lost in a terrible storm, and the Elizabeth, being separated from Drake's vessel, wandered about in search of him for a time and then sailed for England, where her captain was disgraced for having abandoned his commander. Drake was driven from the Bay of Parting of Friends, as he named the spot in which he lost sight of the Elizabeth, and was swept southward to the coast of Terra del Fuego, where he was forced from his anchorage and obliged to abandon the pinnace, with eight men in it and one day's provisions, to the mercy of the winds.
The miseries endured by these eight men are hardly equalled in the annals of maritime disaster. They gained the shore, salted and dried penguins for food, and coasted on till they reached the Plata. Six of them landed, and, of these six, four were taken prisoners by the Indians. The other two were wounded in attempting to escape to the boat, as were the two who were left in charge. These four succeeded in reaching an island nine miles from the coast, where two of them died of their wounds. The other two lived for two months upon crabs and eels, and a fruit resembling an orange, which was the only means they had of quenching their thirst. One night their boat was dashed to pieces against the rocks. Unable longer to endure the want of water, they attempted to paddle to land upon a plank ten feet long. This was the laborious work of three days and two nights. They found a rivulet of fresh water; and one of them, William Pitcher, unable to resist the temptation of drinking to excess, died of its effects in half an hour. His companion was held in captivity for nine years by the Indians, when he was permitted to return to England.
Drake, after the loss of the pinnace, was driven again to thesouthward, and, in the quaint language of the times, "fell in with the uttermost part of the land towards the South Pole, where the Atlantic Ocean and the South Sea meet in a large and free scope." He saw the cape since called Cape Horn, and anchored there: he gave the name of Elizabethides to all the islands lying in the neighborhood. As he neither doubled nor named this cape, it remained for the daring navigators Schouten and Lemaire to demonstrate its importance, by passing around it from one ocean into the other, which Drake, it will be observed, had not done. He went ashore, however, and, leaning over a rock which extended the farthest into the sea, returned to the ship and told the crew that he had been farther south than any man living. He anchored at the island of Mocha on the 29th of November, having coasted for four weeks to the northward along the South American shore. He landed with ten men, and was attacked by the Indians, who took them for Spaniards. Two of his men were killed, all of them disabled, and he himself badly wounded with an arrow under the right eye. Not one of the assailants was hurt. Drake made no attempt to take vengeance for this unprovoked attack, as it was evident it was begun under the mistaken idea that they were Spaniards, whose atrocities had made every native of the country their enemy. He sailed for Peru on the same day.
Early in December he learned, from an Indian who was found fishing in his canoe, that he had passed twenty miles beyond the port of Valhario,—now Valparaiso; and that in this port lay a Spanish ship well laden. Drake sailed for this place, where he found the ship riding at anchor, with eight Spaniards and three negroes on board. These, taking the new-comers for friends,—for the Spaniards had never yet seen an enemy in this ocean,—welcomed them with drum and trumpet, and opened a jar of Chili wine in which to drink their health. Thomas Moore, the former captain of the Christopher pinnace, was the first to board the unsuspecting craft. He laid lustilyabout him, upon which the principal Spaniard crossed himself and jumped overboard. The rest were easily secured under the hatches. The prize was rifled, and one thousand seven hundred and seventy jars of Chili wine, sixty thousand pieces of gold, and a number of strings of pearls, were taken from her. The miserable town, consisting of nine families, who at once fled to the interior, was next ransacked. A poor little church was robbed of a silver chalice, two cruets, and a cloth with which the altar was spread. A warehouse was forced to disgorge its store of Chili wine and cedar planks. Thus did Drake, armed with the sanction of Elizabeth, Queen of England, plunder a handful of inoffensive men securely anchored in a peaceful roadstead, who saluted their coming with music and with wine. Thus did Drake commit sacrilege in a Christian church, and furnish the mess-room of his ship from the spoils of a Catholic altar. Even Southey admits that, in this affair, Drake deserves no other name than that of pirate. And we shall see that he deserved it equally well throughout his stay upon the coast.
SEA ANEMONES.
SEA ANEMONES.
SEA ANEMONES.
CHAPTER XXVII.DRAKE'S EXPLOIT WITH A SLEEPING SPANIARD—HIS ACHIEVEMENTS AT CALLAO—BATTLE WITH A TREASURE-SHIP—DRAKE GIVES A RECEIPT FOR HER CARGO—INDITES A TOUCHING EPISTLE—HIS PLANS FOR RETURNING HOME—FRESH CAPTURES—PERFORMANCES AT GUATULCO AND ACAPULCO—DRAKE DISMISSES HIS PILOT—EXCEEDING COLD WEATHER—DRAKE REGARDED AS A GOD BY THE CALIFORNIANS—SAILS FOR THE MOLUCCAS—VISITS TERNATE AND CELEBES—THE PELICAN UPON A REEF—THE RETURN VOYAGE—PROTEST OF THE SPANISH AMBASSADOR—HE STYLES DRAKE THE MASTER-THIEF OF THE UNKNOWN WORLD—QUEEN ELIZABETH ON BOARD THE PELICAN—DRAKE'S USE OF HIS FORTUNE—HIS DEATH—THE VOYAGE OF JOHN DAVIS TO THE NORTHWEST.A fortnight after leaving Valparaiso, Drake anchored at the mouth of the Coquimbo. The watering party sent ashore had barely time to escape from a body of five hundred horse and foot. At another place, called Tarapaca, the waterers found a Spaniard lying asleep, and took from him thirteen bars of silver of the value of four thousand ducats. Southey states, as if it were a trait of magnanimity, that no personal injury was offered to the sleeping man. They next captured eight lamas, each carrying a hundred pounds of silver. At Arica they found two ships at anchor, a single negro being on board of each: from the one they took forty bars of silver, and from the other two hundred jars of wine. As the Pelican was more than a match for the two negroes, the latter wisely offered no resistance. Drake arrived at Callao, the port of Lima,—Lima being the capital of Peru,—before it was known that an enemy's ship had entered the waters of the Pacific. He immediately boarded a bark laden with silk, which he consented to leave unmolested on conditionthat the owner would pilot him into Callao, which he did. Here Drake found seventeen ships, twelve of which had sent their sails ashore, so that they were as helpless as logs. He rifled them of their silver, silk, and linen, and then cut their cables and let them drift out to sea. Learning that a richly-laden treasure-ship, named the Cacafuego, had lately sailed for Paita, he at once gave chase. He stopped a vessel bound for Callao; and such was his thirst for gain, that he took from it a small silver lamp, the only article of value on board. In a ship bound to Panama he found forty bars of silver, eighty pounds of gold, and a golden crucifix set with large emeralds. Soon after crossing the line, the Cacafuego was discovered ten miles to seaward, by Drake's brother John. The Pelican's sailing qualities were now improved by what Sylva, the pilot, calls a "pretty device." Empty jars were filled with water and hung with ropes over the stern, in order to lighten her bow. The Spaniard, not dreaming of an enemy, made towards her, whereupon Drake gave her three broadsides, shot her mainmast overboard, and wounded her captain. She then surrendered. Drake took possession, sailed with her two days and two nights from the coast, and then lay to to rifle her. He took from her an immense quantity of pearls and precious stones, eighty pounds of gold, twenty-six tons of silver in ingots, a large portion of which belonged to the king, and thirteen boxes of coined silver. The value of this prize was not far from one million of dollars. Then, as if he had been engaged in a legal commercial transaction, Drake asked the captain for his register of the cargo, and wrote a receipt in the margin for the whole amount!The prize, thus lightened of her metallic cargo, was then allowed to depart. Her captain received from Drake a letter of safe conduct in case he should fall in with the Elizabeth or the Mary. This letter is remarkable for its deep and touching piety. After recommending the despoiled captain to the friendly notice of Winter and Thomas, Drake concludes thus:—"I commit youall to the tuition of Him that with his blood hath redeemed us, and am in good hope that we shall be in no more trouble, but that he will help us in adversity; desiring you, for the passion of Christ, if you fall into any danger, that you will not despair of God's mercy, for he will defend you and preserve you from all peril, and bring us to our desired haven: to whom be all honor, and praise, and glory, forever and ever. Amen."Your sorrowful captain,Whose heart is heavy for you,Francis Drake."Drake now considered his object in these seas as accomplished: the indignities offered by the Spaniards to his queen and country were avenged, and their commerce was well-nigh annihilated. He next examined the various plans of returning home with his booty. He thought it impossible to go back by the way he had come: the whole coast of Chili and Peru was in alarm, and ships had undoubtedly been despatched to intercept him. Moreover, the season (for it was now February, 1579) was unfavorable either for passing the Strait or for doubling the Cape. He might have followed the course of Magellan, and thus have circumnavigated the globe; but this seemed but a paltry imitation to his daring and inventive mind. He conceived the idea of discovering a Northwest Passage and returning to England by the North Polar Sea. He therefore sailed towards the north, making the coast of Nicaragua in the middle of March. Here he captured a small craft laden with sarsaparilla, butter, and honey. A neighboring island supplied him with wood and fish: alligators and monkeys also abounded there. A vessel from Manilla, which he captured while her crew were asleep, contributed to his stores large quantities of muslin, Chinese porcelain, and silks. A negro taken from this vessel piloted him into the haven of Guatulco, on the coast of Mexico, inhabited by seventeen Spaniards and a few negroes. Drake ransacked this place, but boasts of no other booty than a bushel of silver coins and a gold chain that ThomasMoon took from the person of the escaping governor. At Acapulco he found a few Spaniards engaged in trying and condemning a parcel of the unhappy natives. He broke up the court, and sent both judges and prisoners on board his vessel.DRAKE INTERRUPTING THE COURSE OF JUSTICE AT ACAPULCO.Before leaving Acapulco, Drake put the pilot, Nuno da Sylva, whom he had taken at the Cape Verds, on board a ship in the harbor, to find his way back to Portugal as best he could. He then sailed four thousand five hundred miles in various directions, till he found himself in a piercingly cold climate, where the meat froze as soon as it was removed from the fire. This was in latitude forty-eight north. So he sailed back again ten degrees and anchored in an excellent harbor on the California coast. This harbor is considered by numerous authorities as the present Bay of San Francisco. The natives, who had been visited but once by Europeans,—under the Portuguese Cabrillo, thirty-seven years before,—had not learned to distrust them, and readily entered into relations of commerce and amity with Drake's party. From the Indians the latter obtained quantities of an herb which they calledtabak, and which was undoubtedly tobacco. The Californians soon came to regard the strangers as gods, and did them religious honors. The king resigned to Drake all title to the surrounding country, and offered to become his subject. So he took possession of the crown and dignity of the said territory in the name and for the use of her majesty the queen. The Californians, we are told, accompanied this act of surrenderwith a song and dance of triumph, "because they were not only visited of gods, but the great and chief god was now become their god, their king and patron, and themselves the only happy and blessed people in all the world." Drake named the country New Albion, in honor of Old Albion or England. He set up a monument of the queen's "right and title to the same, namely, a plate nailed upon a fair great post, whereon was engraved her majesty's name, with the day and year of arrival." After remaining five weeks in the harbor, Drake weighed anchor, on the 23d of July, resolved to abandon any further attempt in northern latitudes, and to steer for the Moluccas, after the example of Magellan.On the 13th of October he discovered several islands in latitude eight degrees north, and was soon surrounded with canoes laden with cocoanuts and fruit. These canoes were hollowed out of a single log with wonderful art, and were as smooth as polished horn, and decorated throughout with shells thickly set. The ears of the natives hung down considerably from the weight of the ornaments worn in them. Their nails were long and sharp, and were evidently used as a weapon. Their teeth were black as jet,—an effect obtained by the use of the betel-root. These people were friendly and commercially inclined. Drake visited other groups, where the principal occupation of the natives was selling cinnamon to the Portuguese. At Ternate, one of the Moluccas, the king offered the sovereignty of the isles to Drake, and sent him presents of "imperfect and liquid sugar,"—molasses, probably,—"rice, poultry, cloves, and meal which they called sagu, or bread made of the tops of certain trees, tasting in the mouth like sour curds, but melting like sugar, whereof they made certain cakes which may be kept the space of ten years, and yet then good to be eaten." Drake stayed here six days, laid in a large stock of cloves, and sailed on the 9th of November. At a small island near Celebes, where he set up his forge and caused the ship to be carefully repaired, he and his men sawsights which they have described in somewhat exaggerated terms:—"tall trees without branches except a tuft at the very top, in which swarms of fiery worms, flying in the air, made a show as if every twig had been a burning candle; bats bigger than large hens,—a very ugly poultry; cray-fish, or land-crabs, one of which was enough for four men, and which dug huge caves under the roots of trees, or, for want of better refuge, would climb trees and hide in the forks of the branches." This spot was appropriately named Crab Island.On the 9th of January, 1580, the ship ran upon a rocky shoal and stuck fast. The crew were first summoned to prayers, and then ordered to lighten the ship. Three tons of cloves were thrown over, eight guns, and a quantity of meal and pulse. One authority says distinctly that no gold or silver was thrown into the water, though it was the heaviest part of the cargo; another authority asserts the contrary in the following passage:—"Conceiving that the best way to lighten the ship was to ease their consciences, they humbled themselves by fasting, afterwards dining on Christ in the sacrament, expecting no other than to sup with him in heaven. Then they cast out of their ship six great pieces of ordnance, threw overboard as much wealth as would break the heart of a miser to think of it, with much sugar and packs of spices, making a caudle of the sea round about." The ship was at last freed, and started again on her way. Her adventures from this point offer no very salient features: she stopped at Java, the Cape of Good Hope, and Sierra Leone. In the latter place Drake saw troops of elephants, and oysters fastened on to the twigs of trees and hanging down into the water in strings.Drake arrived at Plymouth after a voyage of two years and ten months. Like Magellan, he found he had lost a day in his reckoning. He immediately repaired to court, where he was graciously received, his treasure, however, being placed in sequestration, to answer such demands as might be made, upon it.Drake was denounced in many quarters as a pirate, while in others collections of songs and epigrams were made, celebrating him and his ship in the highest terms. The Spanish ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza, who called him the Master-Thief of the Unknown World, demanded that he should be punished according to the laws of nations. Elizabeth firmly asserted her right of navigating the ocean in all parts, and denied that the Pope's grant of a monopoly in the Indies to the Spaniards and Portuguese was of any binding effect upon her. She yielded, however, so far as to restore, to the agent of several of the merchants whom Drake had despoiled, large sums of money. Enough remained, however, to make the expedition a remunerating one for the captors. The queen then, in a pompous and solemn ceremony, gave to the entire affair an official and governmental ratification. She ordered Drake's ship to be drawn up in a little creek near Deptford, to be there preserved as a monument of the most memorable voyage the English had ever yet performed. She went on board of her, and partook of a banquet there with the commander, who, kneeling at her feet, rose up Sir Francis Drake. The Westminster students inscribed a Latin quatrain upon the mainmast, of which the following lines are a translation:"Sir Drake, whom well the world's end knows, which thou didst compass round,And whom both poles of heaven saw—which north and south do bound,—The stars above will make thee known, if men here silent were:The sun himself cannot forget his fellow-traveller."The ship remained at Deptford till she decayed and fell to pieces: a chair was made from one of her planks and presented to the University of Oxford, where it is still to be seen.QUEEN ELIZABETH KNIGHTING DRAKE.Such was the first voyage around the world accomplished by an Englishman. Drake's success awakened the spirit and genius of navigation in the English people, and may be said to have contributed in no slight degree to the naval supremacy they afterwards acquired. If, in accordance with the manner of the times, he was quite as much a pirate as a navigator, and mingled plunder and piety, prayer and pillage, in pretty equal proportions, and is to be judged accordingly, he at least made a noble use of the fortune he had acquired, in aiding the queen in her wars with Spain, and in encouraging the construction of public works. He built, with his own resources, an aqueduct twenty miles in length, with which to supply Plymouth with water. He died at sea, while commanding an expedition against the Spanish West India Islands. He wrote no account of his adventures and discoveries. A volume published by Nuno da Sylva, his Portuguese pilot, whose statements were confirmed by the officers, has served as the basis of the various narratives in existence.We may briefly allude here to an attempt made in 1585, under the auspices of the English Government, by John Davis, a seaman of acknowledged ability, with two ships,—the Sunshine and Moonshine,—to discover the Northwest Passage. After a voyage of six weeks, he saw, in north latitude 60°, a mountainous and ice-bound promontory. It was the southwestern point of Greenland, and he gave it the name of Cape Desolation, which it still retains. He now sailed to the northwest, discovered islands, coasts, and harbors, to which he gave appropriate appellations. He thus was the first to enter the strait which bears his name, and beyond which Baffin, thirty years later, was to discover the vast bay which, in its turn, was to bear his name. Davis made two subsequent voyages to these waters in search of a passage across the continent, but, with the exception of the discovery of Davis' Strait, effected nothing which needs to be chronicled here. This single discovery, however, was one of the utmost importance, as it served to stimulate research and to encourage further effort in this direction. More than two centuries were nevertheless destined to elapse before success was to be attained.
DRAKE'S EXPLOIT WITH A SLEEPING SPANIARD—HIS ACHIEVEMENTS AT CALLAO—BATTLE WITH A TREASURE-SHIP—DRAKE GIVES A RECEIPT FOR HER CARGO—INDITES A TOUCHING EPISTLE—HIS PLANS FOR RETURNING HOME—FRESH CAPTURES—PERFORMANCES AT GUATULCO AND ACAPULCO—DRAKE DISMISSES HIS PILOT—EXCEEDING COLD WEATHER—DRAKE REGARDED AS A GOD BY THE CALIFORNIANS—SAILS FOR THE MOLUCCAS—VISITS TERNATE AND CELEBES—THE PELICAN UPON A REEF—THE RETURN VOYAGE—PROTEST OF THE SPANISH AMBASSADOR—HE STYLES DRAKE THE MASTER-THIEF OF THE UNKNOWN WORLD—QUEEN ELIZABETH ON BOARD THE PELICAN—DRAKE'S USE OF HIS FORTUNE—HIS DEATH—THE VOYAGE OF JOHN DAVIS TO THE NORTHWEST.
A fortnight after leaving Valparaiso, Drake anchored at the mouth of the Coquimbo. The watering party sent ashore had barely time to escape from a body of five hundred horse and foot. At another place, called Tarapaca, the waterers found a Spaniard lying asleep, and took from him thirteen bars of silver of the value of four thousand ducats. Southey states, as if it were a trait of magnanimity, that no personal injury was offered to the sleeping man. They next captured eight lamas, each carrying a hundred pounds of silver. At Arica they found two ships at anchor, a single negro being on board of each: from the one they took forty bars of silver, and from the other two hundred jars of wine. As the Pelican was more than a match for the two negroes, the latter wisely offered no resistance. Drake arrived at Callao, the port of Lima,—Lima being the capital of Peru,—before it was known that an enemy's ship had entered the waters of the Pacific. He immediately boarded a bark laden with silk, which he consented to leave unmolested on conditionthat the owner would pilot him into Callao, which he did. Here Drake found seventeen ships, twelve of which had sent their sails ashore, so that they were as helpless as logs. He rifled them of their silver, silk, and linen, and then cut their cables and let them drift out to sea. Learning that a richly-laden treasure-ship, named the Cacafuego, had lately sailed for Paita, he at once gave chase. He stopped a vessel bound for Callao; and such was his thirst for gain, that he took from it a small silver lamp, the only article of value on board. In a ship bound to Panama he found forty bars of silver, eighty pounds of gold, and a golden crucifix set with large emeralds. Soon after crossing the line, the Cacafuego was discovered ten miles to seaward, by Drake's brother John. The Pelican's sailing qualities were now improved by what Sylva, the pilot, calls a "pretty device." Empty jars were filled with water and hung with ropes over the stern, in order to lighten her bow. The Spaniard, not dreaming of an enemy, made towards her, whereupon Drake gave her three broadsides, shot her mainmast overboard, and wounded her captain. She then surrendered. Drake took possession, sailed with her two days and two nights from the coast, and then lay to to rifle her. He took from her an immense quantity of pearls and precious stones, eighty pounds of gold, twenty-six tons of silver in ingots, a large portion of which belonged to the king, and thirteen boxes of coined silver. The value of this prize was not far from one million of dollars. Then, as if he had been engaged in a legal commercial transaction, Drake asked the captain for his register of the cargo, and wrote a receipt in the margin for the whole amount!
The prize, thus lightened of her metallic cargo, was then allowed to depart. Her captain received from Drake a letter of safe conduct in case he should fall in with the Elizabeth or the Mary. This letter is remarkable for its deep and touching piety. After recommending the despoiled captain to the friendly notice of Winter and Thomas, Drake concludes thus:—"I commit youall to the tuition of Him that with his blood hath redeemed us, and am in good hope that we shall be in no more trouble, but that he will help us in adversity; desiring you, for the passion of Christ, if you fall into any danger, that you will not despair of God's mercy, for he will defend you and preserve you from all peril, and bring us to our desired haven: to whom be all honor, and praise, and glory, forever and ever. Amen.
"Your sorrowful captain,
Whose heart is heavy for you,
Francis Drake."
Drake now considered his object in these seas as accomplished: the indignities offered by the Spaniards to his queen and country were avenged, and their commerce was well-nigh annihilated. He next examined the various plans of returning home with his booty. He thought it impossible to go back by the way he had come: the whole coast of Chili and Peru was in alarm, and ships had undoubtedly been despatched to intercept him. Moreover, the season (for it was now February, 1579) was unfavorable either for passing the Strait or for doubling the Cape. He might have followed the course of Magellan, and thus have circumnavigated the globe; but this seemed but a paltry imitation to his daring and inventive mind. He conceived the idea of discovering a Northwest Passage and returning to England by the North Polar Sea. He therefore sailed towards the north, making the coast of Nicaragua in the middle of March. Here he captured a small craft laden with sarsaparilla, butter, and honey. A neighboring island supplied him with wood and fish: alligators and monkeys also abounded there. A vessel from Manilla, which he captured while her crew were asleep, contributed to his stores large quantities of muslin, Chinese porcelain, and silks. A negro taken from this vessel piloted him into the haven of Guatulco, on the coast of Mexico, inhabited by seventeen Spaniards and a few negroes. Drake ransacked this place, but boasts of no other booty than a bushel of silver coins and a gold chain that ThomasMoon took from the person of the escaping governor. At Acapulco he found a few Spaniards engaged in trying and condemning a parcel of the unhappy natives. He broke up the court, and sent both judges and prisoners on board his vessel.
DRAKE INTERRUPTING THE COURSE OF JUSTICE AT ACAPULCO.
DRAKE INTERRUPTING THE COURSE OF JUSTICE AT ACAPULCO.
DRAKE INTERRUPTING THE COURSE OF JUSTICE AT ACAPULCO.
Before leaving Acapulco, Drake put the pilot, Nuno da Sylva, whom he had taken at the Cape Verds, on board a ship in the harbor, to find his way back to Portugal as best he could. He then sailed four thousand five hundred miles in various directions, till he found himself in a piercingly cold climate, where the meat froze as soon as it was removed from the fire. This was in latitude forty-eight north. So he sailed back again ten degrees and anchored in an excellent harbor on the California coast. This harbor is considered by numerous authorities as the present Bay of San Francisco. The natives, who had been visited but once by Europeans,—under the Portuguese Cabrillo, thirty-seven years before,—had not learned to distrust them, and readily entered into relations of commerce and amity with Drake's party. From the Indians the latter obtained quantities of an herb which they calledtabak, and which was undoubtedly tobacco. The Californians soon came to regard the strangers as gods, and did them religious honors. The king resigned to Drake all title to the surrounding country, and offered to become his subject. So he took possession of the crown and dignity of the said territory in the name and for the use of her majesty the queen. The Californians, we are told, accompanied this act of surrenderwith a song and dance of triumph, "because they were not only visited of gods, but the great and chief god was now become their god, their king and patron, and themselves the only happy and blessed people in all the world." Drake named the country New Albion, in honor of Old Albion or England. He set up a monument of the queen's "right and title to the same, namely, a plate nailed upon a fair great post, whereon was engraved her majesty's name, with the day and year of arrival." After remaining five weeks in the harbor, Drake weighed anchor, on the 23d of July, resolved to abandon any further attempt in northern latitudes, and to steer for the Moluccas, after the example of Magellan.
On the 13th of October he discovered several islands in latitude eight degrees north, and was soon surrounded with canoes laden with cocoanuts and fruit. These canoes were hollowed out of a single log with wonderful art, and were as smooth as polished horn, and decorated throughout with shells thickly set. The ears of the natives hung down considerably from the weight of the ornaments worn in them. Their nails were long and sharp, and were evidently used as a weapon. Their teeth were black as jet,—an effect obtained by the use of the betel-root. These people were friendly and commercially inclined. Drake visited other groups, where the principal occupation of the natives was selling cinnamon to the Portuguese. At Ternate, one of the Moluccas, the king offered the sovereignty of the isles to Drake, and sent him presents of "imperfect and liquid sugar,"—molasses, probably,—"rice, poultry, cloves, and meal which they called sagu, or bread made of the tops of certain trees, tasting in the mouth like sour curds, but melting like sugar, whereof they made certain cakes which may be kept the space of ten years, and yet then good to be eaten." Drake stayed here six days, laid in a large stock of cloves, and sailed on the 9th of November. At a small island near Celebes, where he set up his forge and caused the ship to be carefully repaired, he and his men sawsights which they have described in somewhat exaggerated terms:—"tall trees without branches except a tuft at the very top, in which swarms of fiery worms, flying in the air, made a show as if every twig had been a burning candle; bats bigger than large hens,—a very ugly poultry; cray-fish, or land-crabs, one of which was enough for four men, and which dug huge caves under the roots of trees, or, for want of better refuge, would climb trees and hide in the forks of the branches." This spot was appropriately named Crab Island.
On the 9th of January, 1580, the ship ran upon a rocky shoal and stuck fast. The crew were first summoned to prayers, and then ordered to lighten the ship. Three tons of cloves were thrown over, eight guns, and a quantity of meal and pulse. One authority says distinctly that no gold or silver was thrown into the water, though it was the heaviest part of the cargo; another authority asserts the contrary in the following passage:—"Conceiving that the best way to lighten the ship was to ease their consciences, they humbled themselves by fasting, afterwards dining on Christ in the sacrament, expecting no other than to sup with him in heaven. Then they cast out of their ship six great pieces of ordnance, threw overboard as much wealth as would break the heart of a miser to think of it, with much sugar and packs of spices, making a caudle of the sea round about." The ship was at last freed, and started again on her way. Her adventures from this point offer no very salient features: she stopped at Java, the Cape of Good Hope, and Sierra Leone. In the latter place Drake saw troops of elephants, and oysters fastened on to the twigs of trees and hanging down into the water in strings.
Drake arrived at Plymouth after a voyage of two years and ten months. Like Magellan, he found he had lost a day in his reckoning. He immediately repaired to court, where he was graciously received, his treasure, however, being placed in sequestration, to answer such demands as might be made, upon it.Drake was denounced in many quarters as a pirate, while in others collections of songs and epigrams were made, celebrating him and his ship in the highest terms. The Spanish ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza, who called him the Master-Thief of the Unknown World, demanded that he should be punished according to the laws of nations. Elizabeth firmly asserted her right of navigating the ocean in all parts, and denied that the Pope's grant of a monopoly in the Indies to the Spaniards and Portuguese was of any binding effect upon her. She yielded, however, so far as to restore, to the agent of several of the merchants whom Drake had despoiled, large sums of money. Enough remained, however, to make the expedition a remunerating one for the captors. The queen then, in a pompous and solemn ceremony, gave to the entire affair an official and governmental ratification. She ordered Drake's ship to be drawn up in a little creek near Deptford, to be there preserved as a monument of the most memorable voyage the English had ever yet performed. She went on board of her, and partook of a banquet there with the commander, who, kneeling at her feet, rose up Sir Francis Drake. The Westminster students inscribed a Latin quatrain upon the mainmast, of which the following lines are a translation:
"Sir Drake, whom well the world's end knows, which thou didst compass round,And whom both poles of heaven saw—which north and south do bound,—The stars above will make thee known, if men here silent were:The sun himself cannot forget his fellow-traveller."
The ship remained at Deptford till she decayed and fell to pieces: a chair was made from one of her planks and presented to the University of Oxford, where it is still to be seen.
QUEEN ELIZABETH KNIGHTING DRAKE.
QUEEN ELIZABETH KNIGHTING DRAKE.
QUEEN ELIZABETH KNIGHTING DRAKE.
Such was the first voyage around the world accomplished by an Englishman. Drake's success awakened the spirit and genius of navigation in the English people, and may be said to have contributed in no slight degree to the naval supremacy they afterwards acquired. If, in accordance with the manner of the times, he was quite as much a pirate as a navigator, and mingled plunder and piety, prayer and pillage, in pretty equal proportions, and is to be judged accordingly, he at least made a noble use of the fortune he had acquired, in aiding the queen in her wars with Spain, and in encouraging the construction of public works. He built, with his own resources, an aqueduct twenty miles in length, with which to supply Plymouth with water. He died at sea, while commanding an expedition against the Spanish West India Islands. He wrote no account of his adventures and discoveries. A volume published by Nuno da Sylva, his Portuguese pilot, whose statements were confirmed by the officers, has served as the basis of the various narratives in existence.
We may briefly allude here to an attempt made in 1585, under the auspices of the English Government, by John Davis, a seaman of acknowledged ability, with two ships,—the Sunshine and Moonshine,—to discover the Northwest Passage. After a voyage of six weeks, he saw, in north latitude 60°, a mountainous and ice-bound promontory. It was the southwestern point of Greenland, and he gave it the name of Cape Desolation, which it still retains. He now sailed to the northwest, discovered islands, coasts, and harbors, to which he gave appropriate appellations. He thus was the first to enter the strait which bears his name, and beyond which Baffin, thirty years later, was to discover the vast bay which, in its turn, was to bear his name. Davis made two subsequent voyages to these waters in search of a passage across the continent, but, with the exception of the discovery of Davis' Strait, effected nothing which needs to be chronicled here. This single discovery, however, was one of the utmost importance, as it served to stimulate research and to encourage further effort in this direction. More than two centuries were nevertheless destined to elapse before success was to be attained.
BRITISH SHIP OF WAR OF 1578 FROM TAPESTRY IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.CHAPTER XXVIII.POLICY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH—THOMAS CAVENDISH—HIS FIRST VOYAGE—EXPLOITS UPON THE AFRICAN AND BRAZILIAN COASTS—PORT DESIRE—PORT FAMINE—BATTLES WITH THE ARAUCANIANS—CAPTURE OF PAITA—ROBBERY OF A CHURCH—REPEATED ACTS OF BRIGANDAGE—CAPTURE OF THE SANTA ANNA—THE RETURN VOYAGE—CAVENDISH'S ACCOUNT OF THE EXPEDITION—THE SPANISH ARMADA—PREPARATIONS IN ENGLAND—THE CONFLICT—TOTAL ROUT OF THE INVINCIBLES—PROCESSION IN COMMEMORATION OF THE EVENT.Queen Elizabeth had found it to her advantage to encourage displays of public spirit in private individuals, and to excite the nobles and persons of fortune who were ambitious of distinction, as well as the indigent in search of employment, to hazard, the one their wealth, the other their lives, in the national service. She thus derived benefit from a class of peoplewho had been of little use in any other reign. Many gentlemen of rank and position devoted a portion of their means to harassing the Spanish at sea, to prosecuting discovery in distant quarters, and to planting colonies upon savage coasts. Among the most distinguished of these was Thomas Cavendish, of Trimley, near Ipswich.CAVENDISH IN BRAZIL.This gentleman was of an honorable family, and possessed a large estate. He equipped, in 1586, three ships of the requisite burden,—the largest, the Desire, being of one hundred and forty tons, the lesser, the Content, being of sixty, and the least, the Hugh Gallant, a bark of forty tons. He provisioned them for two years, and manned them with one hundred and twenty-three officers and men, some of whom had served under Sir Francis Drake. His patron, Lord Hunsdon, procured him a commission from Queen Elizabeth, thus assimilating his vessels to those of the navy, and rendering his contemplated piracies legitimate. Cavendish sailed from Plymouth on the 21st of July, directing his course to the south and touching upon the coasts of Guinea and Sierra Leone. Here the crew destroyed a negro town, in revenge for the death of one of their men, whom the inhabitants had killed with a poisoned arrow. Their course across the Atlantic to the Brazilian shore offers no remarkable features. They erected their forge upon an island, where they healed their sick and built a pinnace. Anchoring in a harbor on the Patagonian coast, Cavendish named it Port Desire, afterhis flag-ship,—a name which it still retains. He seems to have considered the savages to be giants, and asserts that he saw footprints eighteen inches long. He entered the Strait at the commencement of January, 1587, and soon discovered a miserable and forlorn settlement of Spaniards. These numbered twenty-three men, being all that remained of four hundred who had been left there three years before, by Sarmiento, to colonize the Strait. They had lived in destitution for the last eighteen months, being able to procure no other food than a scanty supply of shell-fish, except when they surprised a thirsty deer or seized an unsuspecting swan. They had built a fortress, in order to exclude all other nations but their own from the passage of the Strait, but had been compelled to leave it, owing to the intolerable stench proceeding from the carcasses of their unhappy companions who died of want or disease. Cavendish took the survivors on board, and named the spot upon which the fortress was built Port Famine.PORT FAMINE.Cavendish entered the Pacific late in February, after a tempestuous passage from the Atlantic side. Landing upon the Chilian coast, in the country of the Araucanians, he received a warm reception from the natives, who mistook his men for Spaniards, by whom the territory had been repeatedly invaded in search of gold. He afterwards undeceived them, and found them willing to satisfy his wants when convinced that they did not belong to that avaricious and cruel people. In anotherplace, inhabited by a Spanish colony, he fought a pitched battle with two hundred horsemen, driving those who were not slain back to the mountains. At another spot farther north, the Indians brought him wood and water on their backs. In May he captured two prizes, taking out of them twenty thousand pounds' worth of sugar, molasses, calico, marmalade, and hens, and then burning them to the water's edge. He seized upon the town of Paita, which he ransacked and burned, carrying off a large quantity of household goods and twenty-five pounds' weight of pieces-of-eight, or Spanish dollars. Off the island of Puna he fell in with a ship of two hundred and fifty tons; but, being disappointed at finding her empty, he sank her out of sheer spite. The inhabitants of Puna were Christians, having followed the example of their cacique, who had married a Spanish woman and had thereupon made a profession of her religion. They were rich and industrious. Cavendish pillaged the island, burned the church, and carried off its five bells. Being attacked by the Spaniards and natives combined, he fought a long and bloody battle, after which he ravaged the fields and orchards, burned four ships on the stocks, and left the town of three hundred houses a heap of rubbish. He took a coasting-ship, rifled and scuttled her, and compelled her captain to become his pilot. He continued this course of brigandage and piracy all along the South American and Mexican coasts, destroying towns, pillaging custom-houses, and burning vessels.Early in November, Cavendish, who had been told by the pilot he had taken that a vessel from the Philippines was expected, richly laden, at Acapulco, lay in wait for her off the headland of California. She was discovered on the 4th, bearing in for the Cape. She was the Santa Anna, of seven hundred tons, belonging to the King of Spain, and commanded by the Admiral of the South Sea. Cavendish gave chase, and, after a broadside and a volley of small-arms, boarded her. He was repulsed, but renewed the action with his guns and musketry.The Spaniard was soon forced to surrender, and her officers, going on board the Desire, gave an account of her contents,—which they stated at thirty thousand dollars in gold, with immense quantities of damasks, silks, satins, musk, and provisions. This glorious prize was divided by Cavendish, a mutiny being very nearly the result: it was, however, prevented by the generosity of the commander. The prisoners were set on shore with sufficient means of defence against the Indians; the Santa Anna was burned, together with five hundred tons of her goods; and Cavendish then set sail for the Ladrone Islands, five thousand five hundred miles distant.He arrived at Guam, one of the group, in forty-five days, and from thence prosecuted his homeward voyage, through the Philippine Islands and the Moluccas, to Java. He passed the months of April and May, 1588, in crossing the Indian Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope. He touched at St. Helena early in June, and, when near the Azores, in September, heard from a Flemish ship the news of the total defeat of the great Spanish Armada. He lost nearly all his sails in a storm off Finisterre, and replaced them by sails of silken grass, which he had taken from his prizes in the South Sea. The voyage of Cavendish was the third that had been performed round the world, and was the shortest of the three,—being accomplished in eight months' less time than that of Drake.Cavendish at once wrote a letter to Lord Hunsdon, in which occurs the following brief relation of his achievements:—"It hath pleased the Almighty to suffer me to encompass all the whole globe of the world. I navigated along the coasts of Chili, Peru, and New Spain, where I made great spoils. I burned and sank nineteen sail of ships, great and small. All the towns and cities that ever I landed at I burned and spoiled, and, had I not been discovered upon the coast, I had taken a great quantity of treasure.... All which services, together with myself, I humbly prostrate at her majesty's feet, desiringthe Almighty long to continue her reign among us; for at this day she is the most famous and victorious prince that liveth in the world. Thus, humbly desiring pardon for my tediousness, I leave your lordship to the tuition of the Almighty."Cavendish spent his immense wealth in equipping vessels for a second voyage, which ended disastrously, and in which, after being beaten by the Portuguese off the coast of Brazil, he died of shame and grief. He ranks as one of the most enterprising, diligent, and cautious of the early English navigators, though, of course, he must be regarded as an arrant buccaneer.From what we have said of the piracies of the English, and of their encroachments upon the domain of the Spanish, and of the ardent desire of the latter to retain the monopoly of the trade with the natives of America and to hold the exclusive right to rob and slay them at their pleasure, the reader will be prepared for the imposing but bombastic attempt made by Spain against England in 1588. Philip II. determined to put forth his strength, and his fleet was named, before it sailed, "The most Fortunate and Invincible Armada." It was described in official accounts as consisting of one hundred and thirty ships, manned by eight thousand four hundred and fifty sailors, and carrying nineteen thousand soldiers, two thousand galley-slaves, and two thousand six hundred pieces of brass. The vessels were named from Romish saints, from the various appellations of the Trinity, from animals and fabulous monsters,—the Santa Catilina, the Great Griffin, and the Holy Ghost being profanely intermixed. In the fleet were one hundred and twenty-four volunteers of noble family, and one hundred and eighty almoners, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits. Instruments of torture were placed on board in large quantities, for the purpose of assisting in the great work of reconciling England to Romanism. The Spaniards and the Pope had resolved that all who should defend the queen and withstand the invasion should, with all their families, be rooted out, and their places, their honors,their titles, their houses, and their lands, be bestowed upon the conquerors.Elizabeth and her councillors heard these ominous denunciations undismayed, and adequate preparations were made to receive the crusaders. London alone furnished ten thousand men, and held ten thousand more in reserve: the whole land-force amounted to sixty-five thousand. The fleet numbered one hundred and eighty-one vessels,—fifty more in number than the Armada, but hardly half as powerful in tonnage. Eighteen of these vessels were volunteers, and but one of the one hundred and eighty-one was of the burden of eleven hundred tons. The Lord High-Admiral of England, Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham, commanded the fleet, with Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher in command of the various divisions. A form of prayer was published, and the clergy were enjoined to read it on Wednesdays and Fridays in their parish churches. In this, Elizabeth was compared to Deborah, preparing to combat the pride and might of Sisera-Philip. The country awaited the arrival of the Spaniards in anxiety, and yet with confidence.HULL OF A VESSEL OF THE ARMADA.The Armada sailed from the Tagus late in May, with the solemn blessing of the Church, and patronized by every influential saint in the calendar. A storm drove it back with loss, and it did not sail again till the 12th of July. It was descried off Plymouth on the 20th, "with lofty turrets like castles, in front like a half-moon; the wings thereof spreading out about thelength of seven miles, sailing very slowly, though with full sails, the winds being as it were weary with wafting them, and the ocean groaning under their weight." The English suffered them to pass Plymouth, that they might attack them in the rear. They commenced the fight the next day, with only forty ships. The Spaniards, during this preliminary action, found their ships "very useful to defend, but not to offend, and better fitted to stand than to move." Drake, with his usual luck, captured a galleon in which he found fifty-five thousand ducats in gold. This sum was divided among his crew. Skirmishing and detached fights continued for several days, the Spanish ships being found, from their height and thickness, inaccessible by boarding or ball. They were compared to castles pitched into the sea. The lord-admiral was consequently instructed to convert eight of his least efficient vessels into fire-ships. The order arrived as the enemy's fleet anchored off Calais, and thirty hours afterwards the eight ships selected were discharged of all that was worth removal and filled with combustibles. Their guns were heavily loaded, and their sides smeared with rosin and wild-fire. At midnight they were sent, with wind and tide, into the heart of the invincible Armada. A terrible panic seized the affrighted crews: remembering the fire-ships which had been used but lately in the Scheldt, they shouted, in agony, "The fire of Antwerp! The fire of Antwerp!" Some cut their cables, others slipped their hawsers, and all put to sea, "happiest they who could first be gone, though few could tell what course to take." Some were wrecked on the shallows of Flanders; some gained the ocean; while the remainder were attacked and terribly handled by Drake. The discomfited Spaniards resolved to return to Spain by a northern circuit around England and Scotland. The English pursued, but the exhausted state of their powder-magazines prevented another engagement. The luckless Armada never returned to Spain. A terrific storm drove the vessels upon the Irish coast and upon the inhospitable rocks of theOrkneys. Thirty of them were stranded near Connaught: two had been cast away upon the shores of Norway. In all, eighty-one ships were lost, and but fifty-three reached home. Out of thirty thousand soldiers embarked, fourteen thousand were missing. Philip received the calamity as a dispensation of Providence, and ordered thanks to be given to God that the disaster was no greater.PROCESSION IN HONOR OF THE DEFEAT OF THE ARMADA.A day of thanksgiving was proclaimed in England, inasmuch as "the boar had put back that sought to lay her vineyard waste." Some time afterwards, the queen repaired in public procession to St. Paul's. The streets were hung with blue cloth; the royal chariot was a throne with four pillars and a canopy overhead, drawn by white horses. Elizabeth knelt at the altar and audibly acknowledged the Almighty as her deliverer from the rage of the enemy. The people were exhorted to render thanks to the Most High, whose elements—fire, wind, and storm—had wrought more destruction to the foe than the valor of their navy or the strength of their wooden walls.
BRITISH SHIP OF WAR OF 1578 FROM TAPESTRY IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
BRITISH SHIP OF WAR OF 1578 FROM TAPESTRY IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
BRITISH SHIP OF WAR OF 1578 FROM TAPESTRY IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
POLICY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH—THOMAS CAVENDISH—HIS FIRST VOYAGE—EXPLOITS UPON THE AFRICAN AND BRAZILIAN COASTS—PORT DESIRE—PORT FAMINE—BATTLES WITH THE ARAUCANIANS—CAPTURE OF PAITA—ROBBERY OF A CHURCH—REPEATED ACTS OF BRIGANDAGE—CAPTURE OF THE SANTA ANNA—THE RETURN VOYAGE—CAVENDISH'S ACCOUNT OF THE EXPEDITION—THE SPANISH ARMADA—PREPARATIONS IN ENGLAND—THE CONFLICT—TOTAL ROUT OF THE INVINCIBLES—PROCESSION IN COMMEMORATION OF THE EVENT.
Queen Elizabeth had found it to her advantage to encourage displays of public spirit in private individuals, and to excite the nobles and persons of fortune who were ambitious of distinction, as well as the indigent in search of employment, to hazard, the one their wealth, the other their lives, in the national service. She thus derived benefit from a class of peoplewho had been of little use in any other reign. Many gentlemen of rank and position devoted a portion of their means to harassing the Spanish at sea, to prosecuting discovery in distant quarters, and to planting colonies upon savage coasts. Among the most distinguished of these was Thomas Cavendish, of Trimley, near Ipswich.
CAVENDISH IN BRAZIL.
CAVENDISH IN BRAZIL.
CAVENDISH IN BRAZIL.
This gentleman was of an honorable family, and possessed a large estate. He equipped, in 1586, three ships of the requisite burden,—the largest, the Desire, being of one hundred and forty tons, the lesser, the Content, being of sixty, and the least, the Hugh Gallant, a bark of forty tons. He provisioned them for two years, and manned them with one hundred and twenty-three officers and men, some of whom had served under Sir Francis Drake. His patron, Lord Hunsdon, procured him a commission from Queen Elizabeth, thus assimilating his vessels to those of the navy, and rendering his contemplated piracies legitimate. Cavendish sailed from Plymouth on the 21st of July, directing his course to the south and touching upon the coasts of Guinea and Sierra Leone. Here the crew destroyed a negro town, in revenge for the death of one of their men, whom the inhabitants had killed with a poisoned arrow. Their course across the Atlantic to the Brazilian shore offers no remarkable features. They erected their forge upon an island, where they healed their sick and built a pinnace. Anchoring in a harbor on the Patagonian coast, Cavendish named it Port Desire, afterhis flag-ship,—a name which it still retains. He seems to have considered the savages to be giants, and asserts that he saw footprints eighteen inches long. He entered the Strait at the commencement of January, 1587, and soon discovered a miserable and forlorn settlement of Spaniards. These numbered twenty-three men, being all that remained of four hundred who had been left there three years before, by Sarmiento, to colonize the Strait. They had lived in destitution for the last eighteen months, being able to procure no other food than a scanty supply of shell-fish, except when they surprised a thirsty deer or seized an unsuspecting swan. They had built a fortress, in order to exclude all other nations but their own from the passage of the Strait, but had been compelled to leave it, owing to the intolerable stench proceeding from the carcasses of their unhappy companions who died of want or disease. Cavendish took the survivors on board, and named the spot upon which the fortress was built Port Famine.
PORT FAMINE.
PORT FAMINE.
PORT FAMINE.
Cavendish entered the Pacific late in February, after a tempestuous passage from the Atlantic side. Landing upon the Chilian coast, in the country of the Araucanians, he received a warm reception from the natives, who mistook his men for Spaniards, by whom the territory had been repeatedly invaded in search of gold. He afterwards undeceived them, and found them willing to satisfy his wants when convinced that they did not belong to that avaricious and cruel people. In anotherplace, inhabited by a Spanish colony, he fought a pitched battle with two hundred horsemen, driving those who were not slain back to the mountains. At another spot farther north, the Indians brought him wood and water on their backs. In May he captured two prizes, taking out of them twenty thousand pounds' worth of sugar, molasses, calico, marmalade, and hens, and then burning them to the water's edge. He seized upon the town of Paita, which he ransacked and burned, carrying off a large quantity of household goods and twenty-five pounds' weight of pieces-of-eight, or Spanish dollars. Off the island of Puna he fell in with a ship of two hundred and fifty tons; but, being disappointed at finding her empty, he sank her out of sheer spite. The inhabitants of Puna were Christians, having followed the example of their cacique, who had married a Spanish woman and had thereupon made a profession of her religion. They were rich and industrious. Cavendish pillaged the island, burned the church, and carried off its five bells. Being attacked by the Spaniards and natives combined, he fought a long and bloody battle, after which he ravaged the fields and orchards, burned four ships on the stocks, and left the town of three hundred houses a heap of rubbish. He took a coasting-ship, rifled and scuttled her, and compelled her captain to become his pilot. He continued this course of brigandage and piracy all along the South American and Mexican coasts, destroying towns, pillaging custom-houses, and burning vessels.
Early in November, Cavendish, who had been told by the pilot he had taken that a vessel from the Philippines was expected, richly laden, at Acapulco, lay in wait for her off the headland of California. She was discovered on the 4th, bearing in for the Cape. She was the Santa Anna, of seven hundred tons, belonging to the King of Spain, and commanded by the Admiral of the South Sea. Cavendish gave chase, and, after a broadside and a volley of small-arms, boarded her. He was repulsed, but renewed the action with his guns and musketry.The Spaniard was soon forced to surrender, and her officers, going on board the Desire, gave an account of her contents,—which they stated at thirty thousand dollars in gold, with immense quantities of damasks, silks, satins, musk, and provisions. This glorious prize was divided by Cavendish, a mutiny being very nearly the result: it was, however, prevented by the generosity of the commander. The prisoners were set on shore with sufficient means of defence against the Indians; the Santa Anna was burned, together with five hundred tons of her goods; and Cavendish then set sail for the Ladrone Islands, five thousand five hundred miles distant.
He arrived at Guam, one of the group, in forty-five days, and from thence prosecuted his homeward voyage, through the Philippine Islands and the Moluccas, to Java. He passed the months of April and May, 1588, in crossing the Indian Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope. He touched at St. Helena early in June, and, when near the Azores, in September, heard from a Flemish ship the news of the total defeat of the great Spanish Armada. He lost nearly all his sails in a storm off Finisterre, and replaced them by sails of silken grass, which he had taken from his prizes in the South Sea. The voyage of Cavendish was the third that had been performed round the world, and was the shortest of the three,—being accomplished in eight months' less time than that of Drake.
Cavendish at once wrote a letter to Lord Hunsdon, in which occurs the following brief relation of his achievements:—"It hath pleased the Almighty to suffer me to encompass all the whole globe of the world. I navigated along the coasts of Chili, Peru, and New Spain, where I made great spoils. I burned and sank nineteen sail of ships, great and small. All the towns and cities that ever I landed at I burned and spoiled, and, had I not been discovered upon the coast, I had taken a great quantity of treasure.... All which services, together with myself, I humbly prostrate at her majesty's feet, desiringthe Almighty long to continue her reign among us; for at this day she is the most famous and victorious prince that liveth in the world. Thus, humbly desiring pardon for my tediousness, I leave your lordship to the tuition of the Almighty."
Cavendish spent his immense wealth in equipping vessels for a second voyage, which ended disastrously, and in which, after being beaten by the Portuguese off the coast of Brazil, he died of shame and grief. He ranks as one of the most enterprising, diligent, and cautious of the early English navigators, though, of course, he must be regarded as an arrant buccaneer.
From what we have said of the piracies of the English, and of their encroachments upon the domain of the Spanish, and of the ardent desire of the latter to retain the monopoly of the trade with the natives of America and to hold the exclusive right to rob and slay them at their pleasure, the reader will be prepared for the imposing but bombastic attempt made by Spain against England in 1588. Philip II. determined to put forth his strength, and his fleet was named, before it sailed, "The most Fortunate and Invincible Armada." It was described in official accounts as consisting of one hundred and thirty ships, manned by eight thousand four hundred and fifty sailors, and carrying nineteen thousand soldiers, two thousand galley-slaves, and two thousand six hundred pieces of brass. The vessels were named from Romish saints, from the various appellations of the Trinity, from animals and fabulous monsters,—the Santa Catilina, the Great Griffin, and the Holy Ghost being profanely intermixed. In the fleet were one hundred and twenty-four volunteers of noble family, and one hundred and eighty almoners, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits. Instruments of torture were placed on board in large quantities, for the purpose of assisting in the great work of reconciling England to Romanism. The Spaniards and the Pope had resolved that all who should defend the queen and withstand the invasion should, with all their families, be rooted out, and their places, their honors,their titles, their houses, and their lands, be bestowed upon the conquerors.
Elizabeth and her councillors heard these ominous denunciations undismayed, and adequate preparations were made to receive the crusaders. London alone furnished ten thousand men, and held ten thousand more in reserve: the whole land-force amounted to sixty-five thousand. The fleet numbered one hundred and eighty-one vessels,—fifty more in number than the Armada, but hardly half as powerful in tonnage. Eighteen of these vessels were volunteers, and but one of the one hundred and eighty-one was of the burden of eleven hundred tons. The Lord High-Admiral of England, Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham, commanded the fleet, with Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher in command of the various divisions. A form of prayer was published, and the clergy were enjoined to read it on Wednesdays and Fridays in their parish churches. In this, Elizabeth was compared to Deborah, preparing to combat the pride and might of Sisera-Philip. The country awaited the arrival of the Spaniards in anxiety, and yet with confidence.
HULL OF A VESSEL OF THE ARMADA.
HULL OF A VESSEL OF THE ARMADA.
HULL OF A VESSEL OF THE ARMADA.
The Armada sailed from the Tagus late in May, with the solemn blessing of the Church, and patronized by every influential saint in the calendar. A storm drove it back with loss, and it did not sail again till the 12th of July. It was descried off Plymouth on the 20th, "with lofty turrets like castles, in front like a half-moon; the wings thereof spreading out about thelength of seven miles, sailing very slowly, though with full sails, the winds being as it were weary with wafting them, and the ocean groaning under their weight." The English suffered them to pass Plymouth, that they might attack them in the rear. They commenced the fight the next day, with only forty ships. The Spaniards, during this preliminary action, found their ships "very useful to defend, but not to offend, and better fitted to stand than to move." Drake, with his usual luck, captured a galleon in which he found fifty-five thousand ducats in gold. This sum was divided among his crew. Skirmishing and detached fights continued for several days, the Spanish ships being found, from their height and thickness, inaccessible by boarding or ball. They were compared to castles pitched into the sea. The lord-admiral was consequently instructed to convert eight of his least efficient vessels into fire-ships. The order arrived as the enemy's fleet anchored off Calais, and thirty hours afterwards the eight ships selected were discharged of all that was worth removal and filled with combustibles. Their guns were heavily loaded, and their sides smeared with rosin and wild-fire. At midnight they were sent, with wind and tide, into the heart of the invincible Armada. A terrible panic seized the affrighted crews: remembering the fire-ships which had been used but lately in the Scheldt, they shouted, in agony, "The fire of Antwerp! The fire of Antwerp!" Some cut their cables, others slipped their hawsers, and all put to sea, "happiest they who could first be gone, though few could tell what course to take." Some were wrecked on the shallows of Flanders; some gained the ocean; while the remainder were attacked and terribly handled by Drake. The discomfited Spaniards resolved to return to Spain by a northern circuit around England and Scotland. The English pursued, but the exhausted state of their powder-magazines prevented another engagement. The luckless Armada never returned to Spain. A terrific storm drove the vessels upon the Irish coast and upon the inhospitable rocks of theOrkneys. Thirty of them were stranded near Connaught: two had been cast away upon the shores of Norway. In all, eighty-one ships were lost, and but fifty-three reached home. Out of thirty thousand soldiers embarked, fourteen thousand were missing. Philip received the calamity as a dispensation of Providence, and ordered thanks to be given to God that the disaster was no greater.
PROCESSION IN HONOR OF THE DEFEAT OF THE ARMADA.
PROCESSION IN HONOR OF THE DEFEAT OF THE ARMADA.
PROCESSION IN HONOR OF THE DEFEAT OF THE ARMADA.
A day of thanksgiving was proclaimed in England, inasmuch as "the boar had put back that sought to lay her vineyard waste." Some time afterwards, the queen repaired in public procession to St. Paul's. The streets were hung with blue cloth; the royal chariot was a throne with four pillars and a canopy overhead, drawn by white horses. Elizabeth knelt at the altar and audibly acknowledged the Almighty as her deliverer from the rage of the enemy. The people were exhorted to render thanks to the Most High, whose elements—fire, wind, and storm—had wrought more destruction to the foe than the valor of their navy or the strength of their wooden walls.