weary timbers in a sheltered creek of that little island, a point of which, called Cape Horn, is the last summit of the sinking Cordilleras. Over this precipitous headland Drake stretched his body, looked at the boiling brine below, and then went back to his ship, boasting that he had been further south than any other man. Having named these barren islands the Elizabethides, he then directed his course north-westward and northward, hugging the shore.

Then began a series of plunder-hunting dashes on Spanish ships and towns. The Dons were taken all by surprise,

for no hostile keel had ever cut that sea before. Piloted to Valparaiso by an unsuspecting Indian, the English adventurers rifled the town, whose population consisted of only nine families, and, standing out to sea with an anchored vessel, whose crew had welcomed them as friends with drumbeat and a jar of wine, greedily counted over the gains of their first considerable piratical exploit. A great store of Chili wine and 60,000 pesos of gold (each worth eight shillings) rewarded their unscrupulous action.

Dec. 5,

1578

Mar. 1,

Bagging some smaller game, as he coasted northward, Drake pressed steadily on in chase of a great treasure-ship, of which he had heard at Callao. Bound for Panama, where the bullion crossed the isthmus to be shipped off to Spain, the galleon floated quietly on, unsuspicious of the danger dogging her very heels. On the 1st of March a sail broke the line of the horizon, and unwittingly the Spanish captain, never dreaming of a foe in these waters, ran down into the lion's mouth, to discover the stranger's name and destination. Arrows and cannon-balls replied. The Spaniard's mast was shot away, her captain wounded with a shaft. The Golden Hind had made a golden capture. Drake, then off Cape Francisco, fearing some danger from the shore, sailed out to sea for six-and-thirty hours before he ventured to open the money-chests of his prize. Bars of silver and of gold

1579

in great glittering rows, boxes full of diamonds and other gems, burst upon his delighted gaze, when he felt that he was far enough from land to look. The entire value of the prize was reckoned at 360,000 pesos of gold-in those days a sum almost incalculable. He had now struck his quarry; how to get it home became the important question. Storms and Spaniards alike forbade a return through the Strait of Magellan. He

June 17, 1579

at first resolved to seek a passage to England at the northern extremity of America, and for this purpose coasted on through cutting winds, which froze the rigging and the meat just off the spit, to that opening in the Californian coast now called Port San Francisco. During a stay of five weeks in that sheltered spot the English seamen, who were worshipped by the natives as beings of a higher kind, exchanged friendly signs with these aborigines of the far West. Baskets of tobacco and presents of broiled fish came daily to the English tents from the conical huts built over cup-shaped holes in which the Indians lived; and, in return for these, lotions and ointments were given to those natives who had sores or wounds. Before leaving California, Drake dubbed the country New Albion, because the rocks were white; and he set up on the shore a brass plate with Elizabeth's name and the date of the acquisition engraved on it. Drake did not sail any further north, but, steering right across the Pacific, came to the Philippines, and soon to the Moluccas (Nov. 3). The King of Ternate did homage to his flag, presenting fowls, rice, sugar, spices, and sago. At Celebes the English saw fire-flies and land-crabs, the latter of which they liked exceedingly at table. On the 9th of January 1580 the Golden Hind nearly met her death. Sailing before a fresh wind over a seemingly clear sea, she stuck fast on the edge of a sunken reef. In vain the crew, after earnest prayer, strove to lighten her by strewing the sea with cloves and sugar, making the water round about a caudle," old Fuller tells us.

The last hope seems to have failed

them, and all were expecting to sink with the treasure so keenly sought and so hardly won, when the ebbing tide and the dropping wind left the ship to her own weight, and she slipped off the reef into deep water, having been in extreme danger from eight o'clock one evening until four the next day. At Barateva and at Java they met with kindly treatment; but warnings of danger at hand, in the shape of Portuguese vessels, made the English captain hurry on his homeward way. Rounding the Cape of Good Hope with the finest weather, and calling at Sierra Leone for water, he arrived at Plymouth on the 26th of September 1580, after an absence of nearly three years.

Elizabeth, who delighted in enterprise and well appreciated any lustre cast by Englishmen on England, and who, besides, was in no way annoyed at the loss his exploits inflicted upon Spain, though state etiquette obliged her for awhile to appear so, dined with Drake on board of his victorious ship, which was carefully laid up in a creek at Deptford; and when dinner was over, her fair and royal hands made the hardy mariner a knight. When the timbers of the Golden Hind grew very frail, she was broken up, and a chair, made from some of her best planks, was presented to the University of Oxford.*

In 1595 Sir Francis Drake died of fever near Portobello, in Central America, aged fifty-one.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SPANISH ARMADA.

The resolve-The reasons-Preparation-The Spanish fleet-Union of the English-Arrangements-The storm at Corunna-The game of bowls--The floating crescent-Up the Channel-Parma in a trap-The fire-ships -Wreck and missing-Drake's words.

HILIP THE SECOND, King of Spain, whose sailors had

PHILD

lately beaten the Turks at Lepanto, whose soldiers had still more recently conquered Portugal, who owned, besides his powerful dominions in Europe, the golden soil of the Americas and some of the richest islands in African and Asian seas, who had drenched Holland and Belgium with Protestant blood in defence of that old creed of which he was now the acknowledged champion, resolved during the reign of Elizabeth upon the invasion of England.

For this resolve he had many reasons. In the first place England was now the central rock of Protestantism. Mary Queen of Scots, the darling of the Roman Catholic cause, had been lately executed at Fotheringay. English ships had plundered his galleons, and had carried fire into his settlements on every shore. English soldiers had fronted his armies upon the flats by the Rhine and the Scheldt. The English stage had ridiculed the formal crop of his yellow beard and the starch of his Spanish manners. The English queen had quite forgotten the stately protection he had once or twice afforded her, when he lodged at Whitehall as the husband of her step-sister. All

these things, and other seeds of discontent, had mingled in one huge sense of injury, which exploded now in war.

1587

Amid some

So early as June 1587 a treaty against England had been concluded between Philip and the Pope. Mighty preparations then began. Sixtus the Fifth contributed bags of scudi for the holy work. Venice and Genoa hired out their ships to the would-be invader. He seized every boat of sufficient size in the harbours of the Sicilies. He filled the dockyards of Spain and Flanders with the incessant ring of the shipwright's hammer. Soldiers were enlisted and drilled in every part of his dominions. England, on the other hand, was by no means idle in the face of the expected storm. feeble negotiations, which came to nothing, Drake "singed the Spanish monarch's beard," as he humorously styled the destruction of more than one hundred ships in the Spanish harbours. An important though unexpected result of Drake's expedition was the death of the Marquis Santa Cruz, the best admiral in Spain, who, being prevented from accepting a challenge sent him by the great English captain, vexed himself into a fatal fever. The vice-admiral, the Duke of Paliano, died almost at the same time; and the command of the Spanish fleet was given to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who seems to have possessed little nautical skill.

In the summer of 1588,-" that memorable year when the dark cloud gathered around our coasts,"- -one hundred and thirty-two vessels rode at anchor in the Tagus, prepared for the destruction of the English throne. Almost half the fleet consisted of galleons,-huge leviathans, whose wooden ribs were four or five feet thick, and around whose masts heavy cables daubed with pitch were twined to make them shot-proof. There were also great galliasses, in each of which three hundred slaves tugged at ponderous oars; and the smaller fry-zabraes, pataches, caravels-swarmed thick between. Two thousand six hundred cannons of brass and iron,

1588