of the most memorable maritime expeditions. Religious restraints, the thirst for rapid wealth, the desire of strange adventure, had driven the boldest spirits of Spain to the New World; their deeds had been commemorated by the copious and accurate details of their own historians; and the English, through the alliance of their sovereign made familiar with the Spanish language and literature, learned to emulate Spanish success beyond the ocean.

Elizabeth, succeeding Mary in 1558, seconded the enterprise of her subjects. They were the more proud and intractable for the short effort to make England an appendage to Spain; and the triumph of Protestantism nursed the spirit of nationality. England, now the antagonist of Philip, prepared to extend her commerce to every clime. The queen strengthened her navy, filled her arsenals, and encouraged the building of ships in England; she animated the adventurers to Russia and to Africa by her special protection; and after 1574 at least from thirty to fifty English ships came annually to the bays and banks of Newfoundland.

The press teemed with books of travels, maps, and descriptions of the earth; and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, reposing from the toils of war, engaged in the science of cosmography. A well-written argument in favor of the possibility of a northwestern passage was the fruit of his industry.

The same views were entertained by one of the boldest men who ever ventured upon the ocean. For fifteen years Martin Frobisher, an Englishman, well versed in various navigation, had revolved the design of accomplishing the discovery of the north-western passage, esteeming it "the only thing of the world that was yet left undone, by which a notable minde might be made famous and fortunate." Too poor himself to provide a ship, it was in vain that he conferred with friends; in vain he offered his services to merchants. After years of desire, Dudley, earl of Warwick, liberally promoted his design. Two small barks of twenty-five and of twenty tons', with a pinnace of ten tons' burden, composed the fleet, which was to enter gulfs that none before him had visited. As, in June, 1576, they dropped down the Thames, Queen Elizabeth waved her hand in token of favor. During a storm on the

voyage the pinnace was swallowed up by the sea; the mariners in the Michael turned their prow homeward; but Frobisher, in a vessel not much surpassing in tonnage the barge of a man-of-war, made his way, fearless and unattended, to the shores of Labrador. Among a group of American islands, in the latitude of sixty-three degrees and eight minutes, he entered what seemed to be a strait that might lead to the Indies. Great praise is due to him for penetrating far beyond all former mariners into the bays and among the islands of this Meta Incognita, this unknown goal of discovery. Yet for his main purpose his Voyage was a failure.

A stone which he had brought from the frozen regions was pronounced by the refiners of London to contain gold. The news excited the wakeful avarice of the city; there were not wanting those who endeavored to purchase of Elizabeth a lease of the new lands where it had been found. A fleet was immediately fitted out to procure more of the gold rather than to make further search for the passage into the Pacific; and the queen now sent a large ship of her own to join the expedition which was to conduct to infinite opulence. More men than could be employed volunteered their services. Near the end of May, 1577, the mariners, having received the communion, embarked for the arctic El Dorado, "and with a merrie wind" soon arrived at the Orkneys. As they reached the north-eastern coast of America, icebergs encompassed them on every side. With the light of an almost perpetual summer's day the worst perils were avoided. The fleet did not advance so far as Frobisher alone had done. But large heaps of earth were found, which, even to the incredulous, seemed plainly to contain the coveted wealth; besides, spiders abounded, and "spiders were" affirmed to be "true signs of great store of gold." In freighting the ships with the supposed ore and golden sands, the admiral himself toiled like a painful laborer. How strange, in human affairs, is the mixture of sublime courage and ludicrous infatuation! What bolder maritime enterprise than, in that day, a voyage to lands lying north of Hudson Straits! What folly more egregious than to have gone there for a lading of useless earth!

The report of the returning ships led to the first attempt

of the English to gain a foothold in America. It was believed that the rich mines of the polar regions would countervail the charges of a costly adventure, and, for the security of the newly discovered lands, soldiers and discreet men were selected to become their inhabitants. A magnificent fleet of fifteen sail was assembled, in part at the expense of Elizabeth, and confided to the command of Frobisher. Sons of the English gentry embarked as volunteers; one hundred persons were chosen to form the colony, which was to secure to England a country too inhospitable to produce a tree or a shrub, yet where gold lay glistening in heaps upon the surface. Twelve vessels were to return immediately with cargoes of the ore; three were ordered to remain and aid the settlement. The north-west passage was become of less consideration; Asia itself could not vie with the riches of this hyperborean archipelago.

The fleet, as in midsummer, 1578, it approached the American coast, was bewildered among icebergs. One vessel was crushed and sunk, though the men on board were saved. In a thick fog the ships lost their course, and came into the straits which have since been called Hudson's, and which lie south of the imagined fields of gold. The admiral believed himself able to sail through to the Pacific; but his duty as a mercantile agent controlled his desire of glory as a navigator. He struggled to regain the harbor where his vessels were to be laden, and, after "getting in at one gap and out at another," escaping only by miracle from hidden rocks and unknown currents, ice, and a lee shore, he at last succeeded. The zeal of the volunteer colonists had moderated, and the disheartened sailors were ready to mutiny. The plan of a settlement was abandoned, and nothing more was done than to freight the home-bound ships with a store of mineral earth. The historians of the voyage are silent about the disposition which was made of the cargo of the fleet. The belief in regions of gold among the Esquimaux was dissipated; but there remained a firm conviction that a passage to the Pacific Ocean might yet be threaded among the icebergs and northern islands of America.

While Frobisher was thus attempting to obtain wealth and fame on the north-east coast of America, the western limits of

Embark

the territory of the United States became known. ing, in 1577, on a three years' voyage in quest of fortune, Francis Drake acquired immense treasures as a freebooter in the Spanish harbors on the Pacific; and, having laden his ship with spoils, the illustrious corsair gained for himself an honest fame by circumnavigating the globe. But, before following in the path which the ship of Magellan had thus far alone dared to pursue, Drake determined to explore the north-western coast of America, in the hope of discovering the strait which connects the oceans. With this view he crossed the equator, sailed beyond the peninsula of California, and followed the continent to the latitude of forty-three degrees. Here, in June, 1579, the cold seemed intolerable to men who had just left the tropics. Despairing of success, he retired to a harbor in a milder clime within the limits of Mexico, and, having refitted his ship and named the country New Albion, he sailed for England, through the seas of Asia. But it has already been related that the Spaniards preceded him by thirty-six years.

The adventures of Drake were but a career of splendid piracy against a nation with which his sovereign and his country professed to be at peace. The humble labor of the English fishermen who frequented the Grand Bank prepared the way for settlements of their countrymen in the New World. Already four hundred vessels came annually from the harbors of Portugal and Spain, of France and England, to the shores of Newfoundland. The English "were commonly lords in the harbors," and exacted payment for protection.

While the queen and her adventurers were dazzled by dreams of finding gold in the frozen regions of the north, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, with a sounder judgment and better knowledge, watched the progress of the fisheries, and formed healthy plans for colonization. He had been a soldier and a member of parliament; had written judiciously on navigation; and, though censured for his ignorance of the principles of liberty, was esteemed for the sincerity of his piety. Free alike from fickleness and fear, danger never turned him aside from the pursuit of honor or the service of his sovereign; for he knew that death is inevitable, and the fame of

virtue immortal. It was not difficult for him, in June, 1578, to obtain a patent, formed according to commercial theories of that day, and to be of perpetual efficacy, if a plantation should be established within six years. To the people who might belong to his colony the rights of Englishmen were promised; to Gilbert, the possession for himself or his assigns of the soil which he might discover, and the sole jurisdiction, both civil and criminal, of the territory within two hundred leagues of his settlement, with supreme executive and legislative authority.

Under this patent Gilbert collected a company of volunteer adventurers, contributing largely from his own fortune to the preparation. His most faithful friend was his stepbrother, Walter Raleigh. This is he who a few years before had abruptly left the university of Oxford to fight for the Huguenots against the Catholics, and, with the prince of Navarre, afterward Henry IV., to learn the art of war under the veteran Coligny at the time when the Protestant party in France was glowing with indignation at the massacre of their colony of Calvinists in Florida.

The first movement of Gilbert proved a failure. Jarrings and divisions had ensued before the voyage was begun; many abandoned what they had inconsiderately undertaken. In 1579 the general and a few of his assured friends, among them Walter Raleigh, put to sea: one of his ships was lost; and misfortune compelled the remainder to return.

But the pupil of Coligny delighted in hazardous adventure. To prosecute discoveries in the New World, lay the foundation of states, and acquire immense domains, appeared to Raleigh as easy designs, which would not interfere with the pursuit of favor in England. Before the limit of the charter had expired, Gilbert, assisted by his brother, equipped a new squadron. In 1583 the fleet embarked under happy omens; the commander, on the eve of his departure, received from Elizabeth a golden anchor guided by a lady. A man of letters from Hungary, and "a mineral-man " from Saxony, the land of miners, accompanied the expedition; and some part of the United States would have been colonized but for a succession of overwhelming disasters. Two days after leav