sinking beneath the sea, the forests in them killed by the water, and then covered up by layers of sand, brought down from inland, till that new layer became dry land to carry a fresh crop of vegetation. He has thus all that he needs to explain how coal measures were formed. I myself saw once a scene of that kind, which I should be sorry to forget; for there was, as I conceived, coal, making or getting ready to be made, before my eyes--a sheet of swamp sinking slowly into the sea-for there stood trees still rooted below high-water mark, and killed by the waves, while inland huge trees stood dying or dead from the water at their roots. But what a scene !- -a labyrinth of narrow creeks, so narrow that a canoe could not pass up, haunted with alligators and boa-constrictors, parrots and white herons, amid an inextricable confusion of vegetable mud, roots of the alderlike mangroves, and tangled creepers hanging from tree to tree; and overhead huge fan - palms, delighting in the moisture, mingled with still huger broad-leaved trees in every stage of decay the drowned vegetable soil of ages beneath me; above my head, for a hundred feet, a mass of stems and boughs, and leaves and flowers, compared with which the richest hothouse in England was poor and small. But if the sinking process which was going on continued a few hundred years, all that huge mass of wood and leaf would be sunk beneath the swamp, and covered up in mud washed down from the mountains and sand driven in from the sea; to form a bed many feet thick, of what would be first peat, then lignite, and last, it may be, coal, with the stems of killed trees standing up out of it into the new mud and sand-beds above it, just as the sigillarias and other stems stand up in the coal-beds both of Britain and of Nova Scotia; while over it a fresh forest would grow up, to suffer the same fate-if the sinking process went on—as that which had preceded it.

THE EXPLOITS OF DRAKE.

(A.D. 1587.)

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY (b. 1814).

Town Geology.

[At the time referred to, it was well known that Philip of Spain was making great preparations for the invasion of England. Drake's object was to inflict damage on the enemy, and to retard his operations as much as possible. Drake was a Devonshire man, having been born at Tavistock in 1545. On his return from a voyage round the world in 1580, he was knighted by Elizabeth. His exploit of 1587 he described as 'singeing the Spanish

monarch's beard." In the following year he commanded as vice-admiral under Lord Howard, and helped to defeat the Armada. He died in the midst of a successful cruise among the West India Islands, and was buried at sea, 1596.]

On the 2nd April, Francis Drake sailed from Plymouth with four ships belonging to the Queen, and with twenty-four furnished by the merchants of London and other private individuals. It was a bold buccaneering expedition-combining chivalrous enterprise with the chance of enormous profit-which was most suited to the character of English adventurers at that expanding epoch. For it was by England, not by Elizabeth, that the quarrel with Spain was felt to be a mortal one. It was England, not its sovereign, that was instinctively arming, at all points, to grapple with the great enemy of European liberty. It was the spirit of self-help, of self-reliance, which was prompting the English nation to take the great work of the age into its own hands.

"The wind commands me away," said Drake, on the 2nd April 1587; "our ship is under sail. God grant that we may so live in his fear that the enemy may have cause to say that God doth fight for Her Majesty abroad as well as at home!" In latitude 40° he spoke two Zeeland ships, homeward bound, and obtained information of great warlike stores accumulating in Cadiz and Lisbon. His mind was instantly made up. Fortunately, the pinnace which the Queen had despatched with orders to stay his hand in the very act of smiting her great adversary did not sail fast enough to overtake the swift corsair and his fleet. Sir Francis had too promptly obeyed the wind when it “ commanded him away," to receive the royal countermand.

On the 19th April, the English ships entered the harbor of Cadiz and destroyed ten thousand tons of shipping, with their contents, in the very face of a dozen great galleys, which the nimble English vessels soon drove under their forts for shelter. Two nights and a day Sir Francis, that "hater of idleness," was steadily doing his work-unloading, rifling, scuttling, sinking and burning those transport ships which contained a portion of the preparations painfully made by Philip for his great enterprise. Pipe-staves and spikes, horse-shoes and saddles, timber and cutlasses, wine, oil, figs, raisins, biscuits, and flour, a miscellaneous mass of ingredients, long brewing for the trouble of England, were emptied into the harbor; and before the second night the blaze of an hundred and fifty burning vessels played

merrily upon the grim walls of Philip's fortresses. Some of these ships were of the largest size then known. There was one belonging to Marquis Santa Cruz of 1,500 tons; there was a Biscayan of 1,200; there were several others of 1,000, 800, and of nearly equal dimensions. At Lisbon, Marquis Santa Cruz, Lord High Admiral of Spain, and Generalissimo of the invasion, looked on mortified and amazed, but offered no combat, while the Plymouth privateersman swept the harbor of the greatest monarch of the world. After thoroughly accomplishing his work, Drake sent a message to Santa Cruz, proposing to exchange his prisoners for such Englishmen as might then be confined in Spain. But the marquis denied all prisoners. Thereupon Sir Francis decided to sell his captives to the Moors, and to appropriate the proceeds of the sale towards the purchase of English slaves out of the same bondage. Such was the fortune of war in the sixteenth century.

Having dealt these great blows, Drake set sail again from Lisbon, and, twenty leagues from St. Michael, fell in with one of those Spanish East Indiamen called caracks, then the great wonder of the seas. This vessel, San Felipe by name, with a cargo of extraordinary value, was easily captured, and Sir Francis now determined to return. He had done a good piece of work in a few weeks, but he was by no means of opinion that he had materially crippled the enemy. On the contrary, he gave the government warning as to the enormous power and vast preparations of Spain. "There would be forty thousand men under way ere long," he said, "well equipped and provisioned;" and he stated, as the result of personal observation, that England could not be too energetic in its measures of resistance. Perhaps the most precious result of the expedition was the lesson which the Englishmen had thus learned in handling the great galleys of Spain. It might soon stand them in stead. The little war-vessels which had come from Plymouth had sailed round and round these vast unwieldy hulks, and had fairly driven them off the field, with very slight damage to themselves. Sir Francis had already taught the mariners of England, even if he had done nothing else by this famous Cadiz expedition, that an armada of Spain might not be so invincible as men imagined. History of the United Netherlands (1861).

DEATH OF RALEIGH.

SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER.

[Sir Walter Raleigh, traveller, statesman, and man of letters, had been the trusted and honored friend of Queen Elizabeth, but on the accession of James I., fell into disgrace, from his share in the proposal to place Arabella Stuart on the throne, and was long imprisoned in the Tower. Released in order to prosecute a scheme of exploration on the Orinoco, he came into collision with the Spaniards on the river, was defeated, and forced to retreat. Through the Spanish influence at Court, James suffered Raleigh to be beheaded, October 29, 1618.

Mr. Gardiner has made a special study of the seventeenth century, and he is the latest and best authority on the reigns of James I. and Charles II. “Of living authors, few, if any, are gifted at once with Mr. Gardiner's impartiality, his breadth of view, his soundness, and his radical respect for facts."-Athenæum, 1881.]

It was in vain that Raleigh begged for a few days to complete some writings which he had on hand; he was told that he must prepare for execution on the following morning. As he was to suffer in Palace Yard, he was taken to the Gatehouse at Westminster to pass the night. With the certainty of death he had regained the composure to which he had long been a stranger. In the evening, Lady Raleigh came to take her farewell of her husband. Thinking that he might like to know that the last rites would be paid to his remains, she told him that she had obtained permission to dispose of his body. He smiled, and answered, "It is well, Bess, that thou mayest dispose of that dead which thou hadst not always the disposing of when it was alive." At midnight she left him, and he lay down to sleep for three or four hours. When he awoke he had a long conference with Dr. Townson, the Dean of Westminster, who was surprised at the fearlessness which he exhibited at the prospect of death, and begged him to consider whether it did not proceed from carelessness or vainglory. Raleigh, now as ever unconscious of his real faults, did his best to disabuse him of this idea, and told him that he was sure that no man who knew and feared God could die with fearlessness and courage, except he was certain of God's love and favor to him. Reassured by these words, Townson proceeded to administer the communion to him; after he had received it, he appeared cheerful and even merry. He spoke of his expectation that he would be able to persuade the world of his innocence. The good Dean was troubled with talk of this kind, and begged him not to speak against the justice of the realm, Raleigh acknowledged that

he had been condemned according to the law, but said that. for all that, he must perish in asserting his innocence.

At eight the officers came to fetch him away. As he passed out to the scaffold he noticed that one of his friends, who had come to be near him at the last, was unable to push through the throng. "I know not," he said, "what shift you will make, but I am sure to have a place.' A minute after, catching sight of an old man with a bald head, he asked him whether he wanted anything. "Nothing," he replied, "but to see you, and to pray God to have mercy on your soul." "I thank thee, good friend," answered Raleigh. "I am sorry I have no better thing to return thee for thy good will; but take this nightcap, for thou hast more need of it now than I."

As soon as he had mounted the scaffold, he asked leave to address the people. His speech had been carefully prepared. Every word he spoke was, as far as we can judge, literally true; but it was not the whole truth, and it was calculated in many points to produce a false impression on his hearers. He spoke of the efforts which it had cost him to induce his men to return to England, and denied having wished to desert his comrades whilst he was lying at the mouth of the Orinoco. He then adverted to a foolish tale which had long been current against him, to the effect that at the execution of the Earl of Essex he had taken his place at a window in order to see him die, and had puffed tobacco at him in derision. The story, he said, was a pure fiction.

As soon as the preparations were completed, Raleigh turned to the executioner, and asked to see the axe. "I prithee," said he as the man held back, "let me see it; dost thou think that I am afraid of it?" He ran his finger down the edge, saying to himself, "This is sharp medicine, but it is a sound cure for all diseases." He then knelt down and laid his head upon the block. Some one objected that he ought to lay his face towards the east. "What matter," he said, "how the head lie, so the heart be right?" After he had prayed for a little while, he gave the appointed signal. Seeing that the headsman was reluctant to do his duty, he called upon him to strike. In two blows the head was severed from the body. His remains were delivered to his wife, and were by her buried in St. Margaret's at Westminster.

A copy of verses written by Raleigh the night before his execution was discovered, and was soon passed from hand to