1568, hastily weighed anchor for Europe, having first hanged his prisoners upon the trees, and placed over them the inscription: "I do not this as unto Spaniards or mariners, but as unto traitors, robbers, and murderers." The natives, who had been ill-treated both by the Spaniards and the French, enjoyed the consolation of seeing their enemies butcher one another.

The attack of the fiery Gascon was but a passing storm. France disavowed the expedition, and relinquished all pretension to Florida. Spain grasped at it as a portion of her dominions; and, if discovery could confer a right, her claim was founded in justice. In 1573, Pedro Melendez Marquez, nephew to the adelantado, Melendez de Aviles, pursued the explorations begun by his relative. Having traced the coast line from the southern cape of Florida, he sailed into the Chesapeake bay, estimated the distance between its headlands, took soundings of the water in its channel, and observed its many harbors and deep rivers, navigable for ships. His voyage may have extended a few miles north of the bay. The territory which he saw was held by Spain to be a part of her dominions, but was left by her in abeyance. Cuba remained the centre of her West Indian possessions, and everything around it was included within her empire. Her undisputed sovereignty was asserted not only over the archipelagoes within the tropics, but over the continent round the inner seas. From the remotest south-eastern cape of the Caribbean, along the continuous shore to the cape and Atlantic coast of Florida, all was hers. The Gulf of Mexico lay embosomed within her territories.

CHAPTER V.

THE ENGLISH ATTEMPT COLONIZATION.

ROBERT THORNE and Eliot, of Bristol, visited Newfoundland probably in 1502; in that year savages in their wild attire were exhibited to the king; but as yet the only intercourse between England and the New World was with its fisheries. In the conception of Europe the new continent was very slowly disengaged from the easternmost lands of Asia, and its colonization was not earnestly attempted till its separate existence was ascertained.

Besides, Henry VII., as a Catholic, could not wholly disregard the bull of the pope, which gave to Spain a paramount title to the North American world; and as a prince he sought a counterpoise to France in an intimate Spanish alliance, which he hoped to confirm by the successive marriage of one of his sons after the other to Catharine of Aragon, youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella.

Henry VIII., on his accession, surrendered to his father-inlaw the services of Sebastian Cabot. To avoid interference with Spain, Thorne, who had long resided in Seville, proposed voyages to the east by way of the north; believing that there would be found an open sea near the pole, over which, during the arctic continuous day, Englishmen might reach the Indies.

In 1527 an expedition, favored by the king and Wolsey, sailed from Plymouth for the discovery of the north-west passage. But the larger ship was lost in July among icebergs, in a great storm; in August, accounts of the disaster were forwarded to the king and to the cardinal from the haven of St. John, in Newfoundland.

By the repudiation of Catharine of Aragon, Henry VIII. sundered his political connection with Spain, and opened the New World to English rivalry. He was resolute in his attempts to suppress piracy; and the navigation of his subjects. flourished under his protection. The banner of St. George was often displayed in the harbors of Northern Africa and in the Levant; and now that commerce, emancipated from the limits of the inner seas, went boldly forth upon the oceans, the position of England summoned her to derive advantage from the change.

An account exists of an expedition to the north-west in 1536, conducted by Hore of London, and "assisted by the good countenance of Henry VIII." But the two ships, the Trinity and the Minion, were worn out by a passage of more than two months before they reached a harbor in Newfoundland. There the disheartened adventurers wasted away from famine and misery. In the extremity of their distress a French ship arrived, "well furnished with vittails:" of this they obtained possession by a stroke of "policie," and set sail for England. The French, following in the English ship, com· plained of the exchange, upon which the king, out of his own private purse," made them full and royal recompense." In 1541 the fisheries of "Newland" were favored by an act of parliament, the first which refers to America.

The accession of Edward, in 1547, and the consequent ascendency of Protestantism, marks the era when England began to foreshadow her maritime superiority. In the first year of his reign the council advanced a hundred pounds for Cabot, "a pilot, to come out of Hispain to serve and inhabit in England." In the next year the fisheries of Newfoundland, which had suffered from exactions by the officers of the admiralty, obtained the protection of a special act, "to the intent that merchants and fishermen might use the trade of fishing freely without such charges."

In 1549 Sebastian Cabot was once more in England, brought over at the cost of the exchequer; and, "for good service done and to be done," was pensioned as grand pilot; nor would he return to Seville, though his return was officially demanded by the emperor. In March, 1551, a special reward

was bestowed by the king on "the great seaman." He seemed to set no special value on his discovery of North America; to find a shorter route to the Indies had been the dream of his

youth, and it still haunted him. He had vainly tried the north-west and the south-west; he now advised to attempt a passage by the north-east, and was made president of the company of merchants who undertook the search for it.

In May, 1553, the fleet of three ships, under the command of Sir Hugh Willoughby, following the instructions of Cabot, undertook to reach China by doubling the northern promontory of Norway. The admiral, separated from his companions in a storm, was driven by the cold in September to seek shelter in a Lapland harbor. When search was made for him in the following spring, his whole company had perished from cold; Willoughby himself, whose papers showed that he had survived till January, was found dead in his cabin. Richard Chancellor, in one of the other ships, reached the harbor of Archangel. This was "the discovery of Russia," and the commencement of commerce by sea with that empire. A Spanish writer calls the result "a discovery of new Indies."

Soon after the accession of Mary to the English throne, the Emperor Charles V. again made an earnest request that Cabot might be sent back to his service; but the veteran refused to leave England, where, in 1556, a new company was formed for discovery, of which he was a partner and the president. He lived to an extreme old age, but the day of his death is uncertain. The discoverer of North America was one of the most remarkable men of his age. Time has spared all too few memorials of his career.

Even the intolerance of Queen Mary could not check the passion for adventure. The sea was becoming the element on which English valor was best displayed; English sailors neither feared the heats and fevers of the tropics, nor northern cold. The trade to Russia, now that the port of Archangel had been discovered, proved very lucrative; and a regular and as yet an innocent commerce was carried on with Africa. The marriage of Mary with the heir to the throne of Spain, and the enthusiasm awakened by the brilliant reception of Philip in London, excited Richard Eden to gather into a volume the history

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 enter prise 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