1562-1595
FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA
How the Sea Rover was attacked and ruined as a Boy on the Spanish Main
off Mexico--His Revenge in sacking Spanish Treasure Houses and crossing
Panama--The Richest Man in England, he sails to the Forbidden Sea,
scuttles all the Spanish Ports up the West Coast of South America and
takes Possession of New Albion (California) for England
If a region were discovered where gold was valued less than cartloads
of clay, and ropes of pearls could be obtained in barter for strings of
glass beads, the modern mind would have some idea of the frenzy that
prevailed in Spain after the discovery of America by Columbus. Native
temples were found in Chile, in Peru, in Central America, in Mexico,
where gold literally lined the walls, silver paved the floors, and
handfuls of pearls were as thoughtlessly thrown in the laps of the
conquerors as shells might be tossed at a modern clam-bake.
Within half a century from the time Spain first learned of America,
Cortés not only penetrated Mexico, but sent his corsairs up the west
coast of the {134} continent. Pizarro conquered Peru. Spanish ships
plied a trade rich beyond dreams of avarice between the gold realms of
Peru and the spice islands of the Philippines. The chivalry of the
Spanish nobility suddenly became a chivalry of the high seas.
Religious zeal burned to a flame against those gold-lined pagan
temples. It was easy to believe that the transfer of wedges of pure
gold from heathen hands to Spain was a veritable despoiling of the
devil's treasure boxes, glorious in the sight of God. The trackless
sea became the path to fortune. Balboa had deeper motives than
loyalty, when, in 1513, on his march across Panama and discovery of the
Pacific, he rushed mid-deep into the water, shouting out in swelling
words that he took possession of earth, air, and water for Spain "for
all time, past, present, or to come, without contradiction, . . . north
and south, with all the seas from the Pole Arctic to the Pole
Antarctic, . . . both now, and as long as the world endures, until the
final day of judgment." [1]
Shorn of noise, the motive was simply to shut out the rest of the world
from Spain's treasure box. The Monroe Doctrine was not yet born. _The
whole Pacific was to be a closed sea_! To be sure, Vasco da Gama had
found the way round the Cape of Good Hope to the Indian Ocean; and
Magellan soon after passed through the strait of his name below South
America {135} right into the Pacific Ocean; but round the world by the
Indian Ocean was a far cry for tiny craft of a few hundred tons; and
the Straits of Magellan were so storm-bound, it soon became a common
saying that they were a closed door. Spain sent her sailors across
Panama to build ships for the Pacific. The sea that bore her treasure
craft--millions upon millions of pounds sterling in pure gold, silver,
emeralds, pearls--was as closed to the rest of the world as if walled
round with only one chain-gate; and that at Panama, where Spain kept
the key.
That is, the sea _was_ shut till Drake came coursing round the world;
and his coming was so utterly impossible to the Spanish mind that half
the treasure ships scuttled by the English pirate mistook him for a
visiting Spaniard till the rallying cry, "God and Saint George!"
wakened them from their dream.
It was by accident the English first found themselves in the waters of
the Spanish Main. John Hawkins had been cruising the West Indies
exchanging slaves for gold, when an ominous stillness fell on the sea.
The palm trees took on the hard glister of metal leaves. The sunless
sky turned yellow, the sea to brass; and before the six English ships
could find shelter, a hurricane broke that flailed the fleet under
sails torn to tatters clear across the Gulf of Mexico to Vera Cruz, the
stronghold of Spanish power.
[Illustration: Sir John Hawkins.]
But Hawkins feared neither man nor devil. He {136} reefed his
storm-torn sails, had the stoppers pulled out of his cannon in
readiness, his gunners alert, ran up the English ensign, and boldly
towed his fleet into port directly under Spanish guns. Sending a
messenger ashore, he explained that he was sorry to intrude on
forbidden waters, but that he needed to careen his ships for the repair
of leakages, and now asked permission from the viceroy to refit.
Perhaps, in his heart, the English adventurer wasn't sorry to get an
inner glimpse of Mexico's defences. As he waited for permission, there
sailed into the harbor the Spanish fleet itself, twelve merchantmen
rigged as frigates, loaded with treasure to the value of one million
eight hundred thousand pounds. The viceroy of Mexico, Don Martin
Henriquez himself, commanded the fleet. English and Spanish ships
dipped colors to each other as courteous hidalgoes might have doffed
hats; and the guns roared each other salutes, that set the seas
churning. Master John Hawkins quaffed mug after mug of foaming beer
with a boisterous boast that if the Spaniards thought to frighten _him_
with a waste of powder and smoke, he could play the same game, and
"singe the don's beard."
Came a messenger, then, clad in mail to his teeth, very pompous, very
gracious, very profuse of welcome, with a guarantee in writing from the
viceroy of security for Hawkins while dismantling the English ships.
In order to avoid clashes among the common soldiers, the fortified
island was assigned for the English to {137} disembark. It was the
12th of August, 1568. Darkness fell with the warm velvet caress of a
tropic sea. Half the crew had landed, half the cannon been trundled
ashore for the vessels to be beached next day, when Hawkins noticed
torches--a thousand torches--glistening above the mailed armor of a
thousand Spanish soldiers marching down from the fort and being swiftly
transferred to the frigates. A blare of Spanish trumpets blew to arms!
The waters were suddenly alight with the flare of five fire-rafts
drifting straight where the disarmed English fleet lay moored. Hawkins
had just called his page to hand round mugs of beer, when a cannon-shot
splintering through the mast arms overhead ripped the tankard out of
his hand.[2]
"God and Saint George," thundered the enraged Englishman, "down with
the traitorous devils!"
No time to save sailors ashore! The blazing rafts had already bumped
keels with the moored fleet. No chance to raise anchors! The Spanish
frigates were already abreast in a life-and-death grapple, soldiers
boarding the English decks, sabring the crews, hurling hand grenades
down the hatches to blow up the powder magazines. Hawkins roared "to
cut the cables." It was a hand-to-hand slaughter on decks slippery
with blood. No light but the musketry fire and glare of burning masts!
The little English company were fighting like a wild beast trapped,
when with a {138} thunderclap that tore bottom out of hull--Hawkins's
ship flew into mid-air, a flaring, fiery wreck--then sank in the
heaving trough of the sea, carrying down five hundred Spaniards to a
watery grave. Cutlass in hand, head over heels went Hawkins into the
sea. The hell of smoke, of flaming mast poles, of blazing musketry, of
churning waters--hid him. Then a rope's end flung out by some friend
gave handhold. He was up the sides of a ship, that had cut hawsers and
off before the fire-rafts came! Sails were hoisted to the seaward
breeze. In the carnage of fire and blood, the Spaniards did not see
the two smallest English vessels scudding before the wind as if
fiend-chased. Every light on the decks was put out. Then the dark of
the tropic night hid them. Without food, without arms, with scarcely a
remnant of their crews--the two ships drifted to sea.
Not a man of the sailors ashore escaped. All were butchered, or taken
prisoners for a fate worse than butchery--to be torn apart in the
market-place of Vera Cruz, baited in the streets to the yells of
on-lookers, hung by the arms to out-of-doors scaffolding to die by
inches, or be torn by vultures. The two ships at sea were in terrible
plight. North, west, south was the Spanish foe. Food there was none.
The crews ate the dogs, monkeys, parrots on board. Then they set traps
for the rats of the hold. The starving seamen begged to be marooned.
They would risk Spanish cruelty to escape starvation. Hawkins landed
{139} three-quarters of the remnant crews either in Yucatan or Florida.
Then he crept lamely back to England, where he moored in January, 1569.
Of the six splendid ships that had spread their sails from Plymouth,
only the _Minion_ and _Judith_ came back; and those two had been under
command of a thick-set, stocky, red-haired English boy about
twenty-four years of age--Francis Drake of Devon, one of twelve sons of
a poor clergyman, who eked out a living by reading prayers for the
Queen's Navy Sundays, playing sailor week days. Francis, the eldest
son, was born in the hull of an old vessel where the family had taken
refuge in time of religious persecution. In spite of his humble
origin, Sir Francis Russell had stood his godfather at baptism. The
Earl of Bedford had been his patron. John Hawkins, a relative,
supplied money for his education. Apprenticed before the mast from his
twelfth year, Drake became purser to Biscay at eighteen; and so
faithfully had he worked his way, when the master of the sloop died, it
was bequeathed to young Drake. Emulous of becoming a great sailor like
Hawkins, Drake sold the sloop and invested everything he owned in
Hawkins's venture to the West Indies. He was ruined to his last penny
by Spanish treachery. It was almost a religion for England to hate
Spain at that time. Drake hated tenfold more now. Spain had taught
the world to keep off her treasure box. Would Drake accept the lesson,
or challenge it?
{140} Men who master destiny rise, like the Phenix, from the ashes of
their own ruin. In the language of the street, when they fall--these
men of destiny--they make a point of falling _up_stairs. Amid the ruin
of massacre in Mexico, Drake brought away one fact--memory of Spanish
gold to the value of one million eight hundred thousand pounds. Where
did it come from? Was the secret of that gold the true reason for
Spain's resentment against all intruders? Drake had coasted Florida
and the West Indies. He knew they yielded no such harvest. Then it
must come from one of three other regions--South America, Central
America, Mexico.
For two years Drake prospected for the sources of that golden wealth.
In the _Dragon_ and _Swan_, he cruised the Spanish Main during 1570.
In 1571 he was out again in the _Swan_. By 1572 he knew the secret of
that gold--gold in ship-loads, in caravans of one thousand mules, in
masses that filled from cellar to attic of the King's Treasure House,
where tribute of one-fifth was collected for royalty. It came from the
subjugated Kingdom of Peru, by boat up the Pacific to the Port of
Panama, by pack-train across the isthmus--mountainous, rugged, forests
of mangroves tangled with vines, bogs that were bottomless--to Nombre
de Dios, the Spanish fort on the Atlantic side, which had become the
storehouse of all New Spain. Drake took counsel of no one.
Next year he was back on the Spanish Main, in the {141} _Pacha_,
forty-seven men; his brother John commanding the _Swan_ with twenty-six
of a crew, only one man older than fifty, the rest mere boys with hate
in their hearts for Spanish blood, love in their hearts for Spanish
gold. Touching at a hidden cove for provisions left the year before,
Drake found this warning from a former comrade, stuck to the bark of a
tree by a hunting knife:--
"_Captain Drake--if you do fortune into this port, haste away; for the
Spaniards have betrayed this place, and taken all away that you left
here--your loving friend--John Garret._"
Heeding the warning, Drake hastened away to the Isle of Pinos, off the
isthmus, left the ships at a concealed cove here, armed fifty-three of
his boldest fellows with muskets, crossbows, pikes, and spontoons.
Then he called for drummers and trumpeters, and rowed in a small boat
for Nombre de Dios, the treasure house of New Spain. The small boat
kept on the offing till dark, then sent ashore for some
Indians--half-breeds whom Spanish cruelty had driven to revolt. This
increased Drake's force to one hundred and fifty men. Silently, just
as the moon emerged from clouds lighting up harbor and town, the
long-boat glided into Nombre de Dios. A high platform, mounted with
brass cannon, fronted the water. Behind were thirty houses,
thatch-roofed, whitewashed, palisaded, surrounded by courtyards with an
almost European pomp. The King's Treasure House stood at one end of
the market. Near it was a chapel with high wooden steeple.
{142} A Spanish ship lay furled in port. From this glided out a punt
poled like mad by a Spaniard racing to reach the platform first. Drake
got athwart the fellow's path, knocked him over, gagged his yells, and
was up the platform before the sleepy gunner on guard was well awake.
The sentry only paused to make sure that the men scrambling up the fort
were not ghosts. Then he tore at the top of his speed for the
alarm-bell of the chapel and, clapping down the hatch door of the
steeple stairs in the faces of the pursuing Englishmen, rang the bells
like a demon possessed.
Leaving twelve men to hold the platform as a retreat, Drake sent
sixteen to attack the King's Treasure just at the moment he himself,
with his hundred men, should succeed in drawing the entire Spanish
garrison to a sham battle on the market-place. The cannon on the
platform were spiked and overturned. Drums beating, trumpets blowing,
torches aflare, the English freebooter marched straight to the market.
Up at the Treasure House, John Drake and Oxenham had burst open the
doors of the store-room just as the saddled mules came galloping to
carry the booty beyond danger. A lighted candle on the cellar stair
showed silver piled bar on bar to the value of one million pounds.
Down on the market, the English trumpeter lay dead. Drake had fallen
from a sword slash and, snatched up by comrades, the wound stanched by
a scarf, was carried back to the boat, where the raiders made good
their escape, richer by a million pounds with the loss of only one man.
{143} Drake cruised the Spanish Main for six more months. From the
Indians he learned that the mule trains with the yearly output of
Peruvian gold would leave the Pacific in midwinter to cross overland to
Nombre de Dios. No use trying to raid the fort again! Spain would not
be caught napping a second time. But Pedro, a Panama Indian, had
volunteered to guide a small band of lightly equipped English inland
behind Nombre de Dios, to the halfway house where the gold caravans
stopped. The audacity of the project is unparalleled. Eighteen boys
led by a man not yet in his thirtieth year accompanied by Indians were
to invade a tangled thicket of hostile country, cut off from retreat,
the forts of the enemy--the cruelest enemy in Christendom--on each
side, no provisions but what each carried in his haversack!
Led by the Indian Pedro, the freebooters struck across country, picked
up the trail behind Nombre de Dios, marched by night, hid by day,
Indian scouts sending back word when a Spaniard was seen, the English
scudding to ambush in the tangled woods. Twelve days and nights they
marched. At ten in the morning of February 11, they were on the Great
Divide. Pedro led Drake to the top of the hill. Up the trunk of an
enormous tree, the Indians had cut steps to a kind of bower, or
lookout. Up clambered Francis Drake. Then he looked westward.
Mountains, hills, forested valleys, rolled from his feet westward.
Beyond--what? The shining {144} expanse of the fabled South Sea! The
Pacific silver in the morning light! A New World of Waters, where the
sun's track seemed to pave a new path, a path of gold, to the mystic
Orient! Never before had English eyes seen these waters! Never yet
English prow cut these waves! Where did they lead--the endlessly
rolling billows? For Drake, they seemed to lead to a New World of
Dreams--dreams of gold, of glory, of immortal fame. He came down from
the lookout so overcome with a great inspiration that he could not
speak. Then, as with Balboa, the fire of a splendid enthusiasm lighted
up the mean purposes of the adventurer to a higher manhood. Before his
followers, he fell on his knees and prayed Almighty God to grant him
the supreme honor of sailing an English ship on that sea!
That night the Indian came back with word that the mule train laden
with gold was close on the trail. Drake scattered his men on each side
of the road flat on their faces in high grass. Wealth was almost in
their grasp. Hope beat riotous in the young bloods. No sound but the
whir of wings as great tropic insects flitted through the dark with
flashes of fire; or the clank of a soldier unstrapping haversack to
steel courage by a drink of grog! An hour passed! Two hours before
the eager ears pressed to earth detected a padded hoof-beat over grass.
Then a bell tinkled, as the leader of the pack came in sight. Drunk
with the glory of the day, or too much grog, some fool sailor leaped in
{145} mid-air with an exultant yell! In a second the mule train had
stampeded.
By the time Drake came to the halfway house,[3] the gold was hidden in
the woods, and the Spaniards fleeing for their lives; though an old
chronicle declares "the general" went from house to house assuring the
Spanish ladies they were safe. The Spaniards of Tierra Firme were
simply paralyzed with fright at the apparition of pirates in the centre
of the kingdom. Then scouts brought word of double danger: on the
Atlantic side, Spanish frigates were searching for Drake's ships; from
the Pacific, two hundred horsemen were advancing in hot pursuit.
Between the two--was he trapped?--Not he! Overland went a scout to the
ships--Drake's own gold toothpick as token--bidding them keep offshore;
he would find means to come out to them. Then he retreated over the
trail at lightning pace, sleeping only in ambush, eating in snatches,
coming out on the coast far distant from Nombre de Dios and Spanish
frigates. Binding driftwood into a raft, Drake hoisted sail of flour
sacks. Saying good-by to the Indian, the freebooter noticed Pedro's
eyes wander to the gold-embossed Turkish cimeter in his own hand, and
at once presented scabbard and blade to the astonished savage. In
gratitude the Indian tossed three wedges of gold to the raft now
sheering out with the tide to sea. These Drake gave {146} to his men.
Six hours the raft was drifting to the sails on the offing, and such
seas were slopping across the water-logged driftwood, the men were to
their waists in water when the sail-boats came to the rescue.
On Sunday morning, August 9, 1573, the ships were once more in
Plymouth. Whispers ran through the assembled congregations of the
churches that Drake, the bold sea-rover, was entering port loaded with
foreign treasure; and out rushed every man, woman, and child, leaving
the scandalized preachers thundering to empty pews.
Drake was now one of the richest men in England. At his own cost he
equipped three frigates for service under Essex in Ireland, and through
the young Earl was introduced to the circle of Elizabeth's advisers.
To the Queen he told his plans for sailing an English ship on the South
Sea. To her, no doubt, he related the tales of Spanish gold freighting
that sea, closed to the rest of the world. Good reason for
England--Spain's enemy--to prove that the ocean, like air, was free to
all nations! The Pope's Bull dividing off the southern hemisphere
between Portugal and Spain mattered little to a nation belligerently
Protestant, and less to a seaman whose dauntless daring had raised him
from a wharf-rat to Queen's adviser. Elizabeth could not yet wound
Spain openly; but she received Drake in audience, and presented him a
magnificent sword with the words--"Who striketh thee, Drake, striketh
us!"
[Illustration: Queen Elizabeth knighting Drake.]
{147} Five ships, this time, he led out from Plymouth in November of
1577. Gales drove him back. It was December before his fleet was at
sea--the _Pelican_ of one hundred tons and twenty or thirty cannon
under Drake, Thomas Doughty, a courtier second to Drake, the
_Elizabeth_ of eighty tons, the _Swan_, _Christopher_, and _Marygold_
no larger than fishing schooners; manned in all by one hundred and
sixty sailors, mostly boys.
Outward bound for trade in Egypt, the world was told, but as
merchantmen, the ships were regally equipped--Drake in velvets and gold
braid, served by ten young gentlemen of noble birth, who never sat or
covered in his presence without permission; service of gold plate at
the mess table, where Drake dined alone like a king to the music of
viols and harps; military drill at every port, and provisions enough
aboard to go round the world, not just to Egypt.
January saw the fleet far enough from Egypt, at the islands off the
west coast of Africa, where three vessels were scuttled, the crews all
put ashore but one Portuguese pilot carried along to Brazil as guide.
Thomas Doughty now fell in disfavor by openly acting as equal in
command with Drake. Not in Egypt, but at Port St. Julian--a southern
harbor of South America--anchored Drake's fleet. The scaffold where
Magellan had executed mutineers half a century before still stood in
the sands.
The _Christopher_ had already been sent adrift as useless. The _Swan_
was now broken up as unseaworthy, {148} leaving only the _Pelican_, the
_Elizabeth_, and the _Marygold_. One thing more remained to be
done--the greatest blot across the glory of Drake. Doughty was
defiant, a party growing in his favor. When sent as prisoner to the
_Marygold_, he had angered every man of the crew by high-handed
authority. Drake dared not go on to unknown, hostile seas with a
mutiny, or the chance of a mutiny brewing. Whether justly or unjustly,
Doughty was tried at Port St. Julian under the shadow of Magellan's old
scaffold, for disrespect to his commander and mutiny; and was
pronounced guilty by a jury of twelve. A council of forty voted his
death. The witnesses had contradicted themselves as if in terror of
Drake's displeasure; and some plainly pleaded that the jealous crew of
the _Marygold_ were doing an innocent gentleman to death. The one
thing Drake would not do, was carry the trouble maker along on the
voyage. Like dominant spirits world over, he did not permit a life
more or less to obstruct his purpose. He granted Doughty a choice of
fates--to be marooned in Patagonia, or suffer death on the spot.
Protesting his innocence, Doughty spurned the least favor from his
rival. He refused the choice.
Solemnly the two, accuser and accused, took Holy Communion together.
Solemnly each called on God as witness to the truth. A day each spent
in prayer, these pirate fellows, who mixed their religion with their
robbery, perhaps using piety as sugar-coating for their ill-deeds.
Then they dined together in the {149} commander's tent,--Fletcher, the
horrified chaplain, looking on,--drank hilariously to each other's
healths, to each other's voyage whatever the end might be, looked each
in the eye of the other without quailing, talking nonchalantly, never
flinching courage nor balking at the grim shadow of their own stubborn
temper. Doughty then rose to his feet, drank his last bumper, thanked
Drake graciously for former kindness, walked calmly out to the old
scaffold, laid his head on the block, and suffered death. Horror fell
on the crew. Even Drake was shaken from his wonted calm; for he sat
apart, his velvet cloak thrown back, slapping his crossed knees, and
railing at the defenders of the dead man.[4] To rouse the men, he had
solemn service held for the crew, and for the first time revealed to
them his project for the voyage on the Pacific. After painting the
glories of a campaign against Spanish ports of the South Seas, he wound
up an inspiriting address with the rousing assurance that after this
voyage, "_the worst boy aboard would never nede to goe agayne to sea,
but be able to lyve in England like a right good gentleman_."
Fletcher, the chaplain, who secretly advocated the dead man's cause,
was tied to a mast pole in bilboes, with the inscription hung to his
neck--"_Falsest knave that liveth_."
On August 17 they departed from "the port {150} accursed," for the
Straits of Magellan, that were to lead to Spanish wealth on the
Pacific.[5]
The superstitious crews' fears of disaster for the death of Doughty
seemed to become very real in the terrific tempests that assailed the
three ships as they entered the straits. Gales lashed the cross tides
to a height of thirty feet, threatening to swamp the little craft.
Mountains emerged shadowy through the mists on the south. Roiling
waters met the prows from end to end of the straits. Topsails were
dipped, psalms of thanks chanted, and prayers held as the ships came
out on the west side into the Pacific on the 6th of September. In
honor of the first English vessel to enter this ocean, Drake renamed
his ship "_Golden Hind_." {151} The gales continued so furiously,
Drake jocosely called the sea, _Mare Furiosum_, instead of Pacific.
The first week of October storms compelled the vessels to anchor. In
the raging darkness that night, the explosive rip of a snapping hawser
was heard behind the stern of the _Golden Hind_. Fearful cries rose
from the waves for help. The dark form of a phantom ship lurched past
in the running seas--the _Marygold_ adrift, loose from her anchor,
driving to the open storm; fearful judgment--as the listeners
thought--for the crew's false testimony against Doughty; for, as one
old record states, "they could by no means help {152} spooming along
before the sea;" and the _Marygold_ was never more seen.
[Illustration: The Golden Hind.]
Meanwhile like disaster had befallen the _Golden Hind_, the cable
snapping weak as thread against the drive of tide and wind. Only the
_Elizabeth_ kept her anchor grip, and her crew became so
panic-stricken, they only waited till the storm abated, then turned
back through the straits, swift heels to the stormy, ill-fated sea, and
steered straight for England, where they moored in June. Towed by the
_Golden Hind_, now driving southward before the tempest, was a
jolly-boat with eight men. The mountain seas finally wrenched the
tow-rope from the big ship, and the men were adrift in the open boat.
Their fortunes are a story in itself. Only one of the eight survived
to reach England after nine years' wandering in Brazil.[6]
Onward, sails furled, bare poles straining to the storm, drifted Drake
in the _Golden Hind_. Luck, that so often favors daring, or the
courage, that is its own talisman, kept him from the rocks. With
battened hatches he drove before what he could not {153} stem,
southward and south, clear down where Atlantic and Pacific met at Cape
Horn, now for the first time seen by navigator. Here at last, on
October 30, came a lull. Drake landed, and took possession of this
earth's end for the Queen. Then he headed his prow northward for the
forbidden waters of the Pacific bordering New Spain. Not a Spaniard
was seen up to the Bay of San Filipe off Chile, where by the end of
November Drake came on an Indian fisherman. Thinking the ship Spanish,
the fellow offered to pilot her back eighteen miles to the harbor of
Valparaiso.
Spanish vessels lay rocking to the tide as Drake glided into the port.
So utterly impossible was it deemed for any foreign ship to enter the
Pacific, that the Spanish commander of the fleet at anchor dipped
colors in salute to the pirate heretic, thinking him a messenger from
Spain, and beat him a rattling welcome on the drum as the _Golden Hind_
knocked keels with the Spanish bark. Drake, doubtless, smiled as he
returned the salute by a wave of his plumed hat. The Spaniards
actually had wine jars out to drown the newcomers ashore, when a quick
clamping of iron hooks locked the Spanish vessel in death grapple to
the _Golden Hind_. An English sailor leaped over decks to the Spanish
galleon with a yell of "_Downe, Spanish dogges_!" The crew of sixty
English pirates had swarmed across the vessel like hornets before the
poor hidalgo knew what had happened. Head over heels, down the
hatchway, reeled the astonished dons. Drake clapped down {154}
hatches, and had the Spaniards trapped while his men went ashore to
sack the town. One Spaniard had succeeded in swimming across to warn
the port.[7] When Drake landed, the entire population had fled to the
hills. Rich plunder in wedges of pure gold, and gems, was carried off
from the fort. Not a drop of blood was shed. Crews of the scuttled
vessels were set ashore, the dismantled ships sent drifting to open
sea. The whole fiasco was conducted as harmlessly as a melodrama, with
a moral thrown in; for were not these zealous Protestants despoiling
these zealous Catholics, whose zeal, in turn, had led them to despoil
the Indian? There was a moral; but it wore a coat of many colors.
[Illustration: Francis Drake.]
The Indian was rewarded, and a Greek pilot forced on board to steer to
Lima, the great treasury of Peruvian gold. Giving up all hope of the
other English vessels joining him, Drake had paused at Coquimbo to put
together a small sloop, when down swooped five hundred Spanish
soldiers. In the wild scramble for the _Golden Hind_, one sailor was
left behind. He was torn to pieces by the Spaniards before the eyes of
Drake's crew. Northling again sailed Drake, piloted inshore by the
Greek to Tarapaca, where Spanish treasure was sent out over the hills
to await the call of ship; and sure enough, sound asleep in the
sunlight, fatigued from his trip lay a Spanish carrier, {155} thirteen
bars of silver piled beside him on the sand. When that carrier
wakened, the ship had called! Farther on the English moored and went
inland to see if more treasure might be coming over the hills. Along
the sheep trails came a lad whistling as he drove eight Peruvian sheep
laden with black leather sacks full of gold.
Drake's men were intoxicated with their success. It was impossible to
attack Panama with only the _Golden Hind_; but what if the _Golden
Hind_ could catch the _Glory of the South Seas_--the splendid Spanish
galleon that yearly carried Peruvian gold up to Panama? Drake gained
first news of the treasure ship being afloat while he was rifling three
barks at Aricara below Lima; but he knew coureurs were already speeding
overland to warn the capital against the _Golden Hind_. Drake pressed
sail to outstrip the land messenger, and glided into Callao, the port
of Lima, before the thirty ships lying dismantled had the slightest
inkling of his presence.
Viceroy Don Francisco de Toledo of Lima thought the overland coureur
mad. A pirate heretic in the South Seas! Preposterous! Some Spanish
rascal had turned pirate; so the governor gathered up two thousand
soldiers to march with all speed for Callao, with hot wrath and swift
punishment for the culprit. Drake had already sacked Callao, but he
had missed the treasure ship. She had just left for Panama. The
_Golden Hind_ was lying outside the port becalmed {156} when Don Toledo
came pouring his two thousand soldiers down to the wharves. The
Spaniards dashed to embark on the rifled ships with a wild halloo! He
was becalmed, the blackguard pirate,--whoever he was,--they would tow
out! Divine Providence had surely given him into their hands; but just
as they began rowing might and main, a fresh wind ruffled the water.
The _Golden Hind_ spread her wings to the wind and was off like a bird!
Drake knew no ship afloat could outsail his swift little craft; and the
Spaniards had embarked in such haste, they had come without provisions.
Famine turned the pursuers back near the equator, the disgusted viceroy
hastening to equip frigates that would catch the English pirate when
famine must compel him to head southward.
Drake slackened sail to capture another gold cargo. The crew of this
caravel were so grateful to be put ashore instead of having their
throats cut, that they revealed to Drake the stimulating fact that the
_Glory of the South Seas_, the treasure ship, was only two days ahead
laden with golden wealth untold.
It was now a wild race for gold--for gold enough to enrich every man of
the crew; for treasure that might buy up half a dozen European kingdoms
and leave the buyer rich; for gold in huge slabs the shape of the
legendary wedges long ago given the rulers of the Incas by the
descendants of the gods; gold to be had for the taking by the striking
of one sure blow at England's enemy! Drake called on the crew to
acquit {157} themselves like men. The sailors answered with a shout.
Every inch of sail was spread. Old muskets and cutlasses were scoured
till they shone like the sun. Men scrambled up the mast poles to gaze
seaward for sight of sail to the fore. Every nerve was braced. They
were now across the equator. A few hundred miles more, and the _Glory
of the South Seas_ would lie safe inside the strong harbor of Panama.
Drake ordered the thirty cannon ready for action, and in a loud voice
offered the present of his own golden chain to the man who should first
descry the sails of the Spanish treasure. For once his luck failed
him. The wind suddenly fell. Before Drake needed to issue the order,
his "brave boys" were over decks and out in the small boats rowing for
dear life, towing the _Golden Hind_. Day or night from February
twenty-fourth, they did not slack, scarcely pausing to eat or sleep.
Not to lose the tremendous prize by seeing the _Glory of the South
Seas_ sail into Panama Bay at the last lap of the desperate race, had
these bold pirates ploughed a furrow round the world, daring death or
devil!
At three in the afternoon of March the 1st, John Drake, the commander's
brother, shouted out from the mast top where he clung, "Sail ho!" and
the blood of every Englishman aboard jumped to the words! At six in
the evening, just off Cape Francisco, they were so close to the _Glory
of the South Seas_, they could see that she was compelled to sail
slowly, owing to the weight of her cargo. So unaware of danger was
{158} the captain that he thought Drake some messenger sent by the
viceroy, and instead of getting arms in readiness and pressing sail, he
lowered canvas, came to anchor, and waited![8] Drake's announcement
was a roaring cannonade that blew the mast poles off the Spanish ship,
crippling her like a bird with wings broken. For the rest, the scene
was what has been enacted wherever pirates have played their game--a
furious fusillade from the cannon mouths belching from decks and
port-holes, the unscathed ship riding down on the staggering victim
like a beast on its prey, the clapping of the grappling hooks that
bound the captive to the sides of her victor, the rush over decks, the
flash of naked sword, the decks swimming in blood, and the quick
surrender. The booty from this treasure ship was roughly estimated at
twenty-six tons of pure silver, thirteen chests of gold plate, eighty
pounds of pure gold, and precious jewels--emeralds and pearls--to the
value in modern money of seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
Drake realized now that he dared not return to England by the Straits
of Magellan. All the Spanish frigates of the Pacific were on the
watch. The _Golden Hind_ was so heavily freighted with treasure, it
was actually necessary to lighten ballast by throwing spices and silks
overboard. One can guess that the orchestra played a stirring refrain
off Cape Francisco that night. The Northeast Passage from Asia to
Europe was {159} still a myth of the geographers. Drake's friend,
Frobisher, had thought he found it on the Atlantic side. After taking
counsel with his ten chosen advisers, Drake decided to give the Spanish
frigates the slip by returning through the mythical Northeast Passage.
Stop was made at Guatalco, off the west coast of New Spain, for
repairs. Here, the poor Portuguese pilot brought all the way from the
islands off the west coast of Africa, was put ashore.[9] He was
tortured by the Spaniards for piloting Drake to the South Seas. In the
course of rifling port and ship at Guatalco, charts to the Philippines
and Indian Ocean were found; so that even if the voyage to England by
the Northeast Passage proved impossible, the _Golden Hind_ could follow
these charts home round the world by the Indian Ocean and Good Hope up
Africa.
It was needless for Drake to sack more Spanish floats. He had all the
plunder he could carry. From the charts he learned that the Spaniards
always struck north for favorable winds. Heading north, month after
month, the _Golden Hind_ sailed for the shore that should have led
northeast, and that puzzled the mariners by sheering west and yet west;
fourteen hundred leagues she sailed along a leafy wilderness of tangled
trees and ropy mosses, beauty and decay, the froth of the beach combers
aripple on the very roots of the {160} trees; dolphins coursing round
the hull like greyhounds; flying fish with mica for wings flitting over
the decks; forests of seaweed warning out to deeper water. Then, a
sudden cold fell, cold and fogs that chilled the mariners of tropic
seas to the bone. The veering coast pushed them out farther westward,
far north of what the Spanish charts showed. Instead of flying fish
now, were whales, whales in schools of thousands that gambolled round
the _Golden Hind_. As the north winds--"frozen nimphes," the record
calls them--blew down the cold Arctic fogs, Drake's men thought they
were certainly nearing the Arctic regions. Where were they? Plainly
lost, lost somewhere along what are now known as Mendocino, and Blanco,
and Flattery. In a word, perhaps up as far as Oregon, and Washington.
One record says they went to latitude 43. Another record, purporting
to be more correct, says 48. The Spaniards had been north as far as
California, but beyond this, however far he may have gone, Drake was a
discoverer in the true sense of the word. Mountains covered with snow
they saw, and white cliffs, and low shelving shores, which is more
descriptive of Oregon and Washington than California; but only the
sudden transition from tropic heat to chilling northern fogs can
explain the crew's exaggerated idea of cold along the Pacific coast.
Land was sighted at 42, north of Mendocino, and an effort made to
anchor farther north; but contrary winds and a rock bottom gave
insecure mooring. {161} This was not surprising, as it was on this
coast that Cook and Vancouver failed to find good harborage. The coast
still seemed to trend westward, dispelling hopes of a Northeast
Passage, and if the world could have accepted Drake's conclusions on
the matter, a deal of expenditure in human life and effort might have
been saved.
Two centuries before the deaths of Bering and Cook, trying to find that
Passage, Drake's chronicler wrote: "_The cause of this extreme cold we
conceive to be the large spreading of the Asian and American continent,
if they be not fully joined, yet seem they to come very neere, from
whose high and snow-covered mountains, the north and north-west winds
send abroad their frozen nimphes to the infecting of the whole
air--hence comes it that in the middest of their summer, the snow
hardly departeth from these hills at all; hence come those thicke mists
and most stinking fogges, . . . for these reasons we coniecture that
either there is no passage at all through these Northerne coasts, which
is most likely, or if there be, that it is unnavigable. . . . Adde
there unto, that though we searched the coast diligently even unto the
48 degree, yet found we not the land to trend in any place towards the
East, but rather running continually North-west, as if it went directly
to meet with Asia. . . . of which we infallibly concluded rather than
coniectured, that there was none._"
Giving up all idea of a Northeast Passage, Drake turned south, and on
June 17 anchored in a bay now {162} thoroughly identified as Drake's
Bay, north of San Francisco.
The next morning, while the English were yet on the _Golden Hind_, came
an Indian in a canoe, shouting out oration of welcome, blowing feather
down on the air as a sign of dovelike peace, and finally after three
times essaying courage, coming near enough the English to toss a rush
basket full of tobacco into the ship. In vain Drake threw out presents
to allure the Indian on board. The terrified fellow scampered ashore,
refusing everything but a gorgeous hat, that floated out on the water.
For years the legend of Drake's ship was handed down as a tradition
among the Indians of this bay.[10]
By the 21st tents were erected, and a rude fortification of stone
thrown round in protection where the precious cargo of gold could be
stored while the ship was to be careened and scraped. At the foot of
the hill, the poor Indians gathered and gazed spellbound at the sight
of this great winged bird of the ocean, sending thirty cannon trundling
ashore, and herself beginning to rise up from the tide on piles and
scaffolding. As Drake sent the assembled tribe presents, the Indians
laid down their bows and spears. So marvellously did the wonders of
the white men grow--sticks that emitted puffs of fire (muskets), a ship
so large it could have carried their tribe, clothing in velvet and gold
braid gorgeous as the plumage of a {163} bird, cutlasses of steel--that
by the 23d great assemblages of Indians were on their knees at the foot
of the hill, offering sacrifices to the wonderful beings in the fort.
Whatever the English pirate's faults, he deserves credit for treating
the Indians with an honor that puts later navigators to shame. When he
saw them gashing bodies in sacrifice, his superstition took fire with
fear of Divine displeasure for the sacrilege; and the man who did not
scruple to treat black slaves picked up among the Spaniards baser than
he would have treated dogs, now fell "to prayers," as the old chronicle
says, reading the Bible aloud, and setting his crew to singing psalms,
and pointing to the sky, at which the Indians grunted approvals of
"ho--ho!"
Three days later came coureurs from the "King of the Indians"--the
chief--bidding the strangers prepare for the great sachem's visit. The
coureurs advanced gyrating and singing; so that the English saw in this
strange people nomads like the races of Scripture, whose ceremony was
one of song and dance. The warriors preceding the chief carried what
the English thought "a sceptre," but what we moderns would call a
peace-pipe. The chains in their hands were probably strings of bears'
claws, or something like wampum; the "crowns of feathers," plumed
head-dresses; the gifts in the rush baskets borne by the women to the
rear, maize and tobacco.
Drake drew his soldiers up in line, and with trumpets sounding and
armor at gleam marched out to {164} welcome the Indian chief. Then the
whole company of savages broke out in singing and dancing. Drake was
signalled to sit down in the centre. Barely had he obeyed when to the
shouting and dancing of the multitude, "a chain" was thrown over his
neck, "a crown" placed on his head, and "the sceptre" put in his hand.
According to Indian custom, Drake was welcomed by the ceremony of
adoption in the tribe, "the sceptre" being a peace-pipe; "the crown,"
an Indian warrior's head-dress. Far otherwise the ceremony appeared to
the romantic treasure hunters. "_In the name and to the use of Her
Most Excellent Majesty_," records the chaplain, "_he (Drake) tooke the
sceptre, crowne, and dignity of the sayd countrie into his hand;_"
though, added the pious chaplain of pirates, when he witnessed the
Indians bringing the sick to be healed by the master pirate's
touch,--"_we groane in spirit to see the power of Sathan so farre
prevails_."
[Illustration: The Crowning of Drake in California.]
To avert disaster for the sacrilege of the sacred touch of healing,
Drake added to his prayers strong lotions and good ginger plasters.
Sometime in the next five weeks, Drake travelled inland with the
Indians, and because of patriotism to his native land and the
resemblance of the white sand cliffs to that land, called the region
"New Albion." "New Albion" would be an offset to "New Spain." Drake
saw himself a second Cortés, and nailed to a tree a brass plate on
which was graven the Queen's name, the year, the free surrender of the
country to the {165} Queen, and Drake's own name; for, says the
chaplain, quite ignorant of Spanish voyages, "_the Spaniards never had
any dealing, or so much as set a foot in this country, the utmost of
their discoveries reaching only many degrees Southward of this place_."
Drake's misunderstanding of the Indian ceremony would be comical if it
were not that later historians have solemnly argued whether an act of
possession by a pirate should hold good in international law.
On the 23d of July the English pirate bade farewell to the Indians. As
he looked back from the sea, they were running along the hilltops
burning more of the fires which he thought were sacrifices.
Following the chart taken from the Spanish ship, Drake steered for the
Philippines, thence southward through the East Indies to the Indian
Ocean, and past Good Hope, back to Plymouth, where he came to anchor on
September 26, 1580. Bells were set ringing. Post went spurring to
London with word that Drake, the corsair, who had turned the Spanish
world upside down, had come home. For a week the little world of
England gave itself up to feasting. Ballads rang with the fame of
Drake. His name was on every tongue. One of his first acts was to
visit his old parents. Then he took the _Golden Hind_ round the
Channel to be dry-docked in Deptford.
For the once, the tactful Queen was in a quandary. Complaints were
pouring in from Spain. The {166} Spanish ambassador was furious, and
presented bills of sequestration against Drake, but as the amount
sequestered, pending investigation, was only fifty-six thousand pounds,
one may suspect that Elizabeth let Drake protect in his own way what he
had taken in his own way. For six months, while the world resounded
with his fame, the court withheld approval. Jealous courtiers "deemed
Drake the master thief of the unknown world," till Elizabeth cut the
Gordian knot by one of her defiant strokes. On April 4 she went in
state to dine on the _Golden Hind_, to the music of those stringed
instruments that had harped away Drake's fear of death or devil as he
ploughed an English keel round the world. After the dinner, she bade
him fall to his knees and with a light touch of the sword gave him the
title that was seal of the court's approval. The _Golden Hind_ was
kept as a public relic till it fell to pieces on the Thames, and the
wood was made into a memorial chair for Oxford.
[Illustration: The Silver Map of the World. Both sides of a medal
struck off at the time of Drake's return to England, commemorating his
voyage around the world. The faint dotted line shows the course sailed
by him in the _Golden Hind_.]
After all the perils Drake saw in the subsequent war--Cadiz and the
Armada--it seems strange that he should return to the scene of his past
exploits to die. He was with Hawkins in the campaign of 1595 against
Spain in the New World. Things had not gone well. He had not approved
of Hawkins's plans of attack, and the venture was being bungled. Sick
of the equatorial fever, or of chagrin from failure, Drake died off
Porto Bello in the fifty-first year of his age. His body {167} was
placed in a leaden coffin, and solemnly committed to that sea where he
had won his first glory.[11]
[1] This is but a brief epitome of the Spaniard's swelling words. Only
the Heavens above were omitted from Spain's claim.
[2] The exact position of the English towards the port is hard to give,
at the site of Vera Cruz has been changed three times.
[3] This halfway station was known as Venta Cruz. Seven of the traders
lost their lives in Drake's attack.
[4] The _Hakluyt Society Proceedings_, 1854, give all details of this
terrible crime. Fletcher, the chaplain, thought Doughty innocent; but
Drake considered the chaplain "the falsest knave that liveth."
[5] Don Francisco de Zarate, commander of a Spanish ship scuttled by
Drake off Guatalco, gives this description to the Spanish government of
the Englishman's equipage: "The general of the Englishmen is the same
who five years ago took Nombre de Dios, about thirty-five years old,
short, with a ruddy beard, one of the greatest mariners there are on
the sea, alike for his skill and power of command. His ship is a
galleon of four hundred tons, a very fast sailer, and there are aboard
her, one hundred men, all skilled hands and of warlike age, and all so
well trained that they might be old soldiers--they keep their
harquebusses clean. He treats them with affection, they him with
respect. He carries with him nine or ten gentlemen cadets of high
families in England. These are his council. He calls them together,
tho' he takes counsel of no one. He has no favorite. These are
admitted to his table, as well as a Portuguese pilot whom he brought
from England. (?) He is served with much plate with gilt borders
engraved with his arms and has all possible kinds of delicacies and
scents, which . . . the Queen gave him. (?) None of the gentlemen sit
or cover in his presence without first being ordered once or even
several times. The galleon carries thirty pieces of heavy ordnance,
fireworks and ammunition. They dine and sup to the music of violins.
He carries carpenters, caulkers, careeners. The ship is sheathed. The
men are paid and not regular pirates. No one takes plunder and the
slightest fault is punished." The don goes on to say that what
troubled him most was that Drake captured Spanish charts of the
Pacific, which would guide other intruders on the Pacific.
[6] The eight castaways in the shallop succeeded in passing back
through the straits. At Plata they were attacked by the Indians; four,
wounded, succeeded in escaping. The others were captured. Reaching
islands off the coast of Patagonia, two of the wounded died. The
remaining two suffered shipwreck on a barren island, where the only
food was fruit; the only drink, the juice of the fruits. Making a raft
of floating planks ten feet long, the two committed themselves to God
and steered for the mainland. Here Pilcher died two hours after they
had landed from drinking too much water. The survivor, Peter Carder,
lived among the savages of Brazil for eight years before he escaped and
got passage to England, where he related his adventures to Queen
Elizabeth. The Queen gave him twenty-two angels and sent him to
Admiral Howard for employment. _Purchas' Pilgrims_, Vol. IV.
[7] The plunder of this port was 60,000 pesos of gold, jewels, and
goods (pesos about 8 shillings, $2); 1770 jars of wine, together with
the silver of the chapel altar, which was given to Fletcher.
[8] The captain was a Biscayan, one Juan de Anton.
[9] Nuno Silva is the name of this pilot. It is from his story that
many of the details of this part of the voyage are obtained.
[10] See Professor George Davidson's pamphlet on _Drake_.
[11] To give even a brief account of Drake's life would fill a small
encyclopaedia. The story of his first ruin off Vera Cruz, of his
campaign of vengeance, of his piratical voyage to the Pacific, of his
doings with the California Indians, of his fight in the Armada--any one
of these would fill an ordinary volume. Only that part of his life
bearing on American exploration has been given here, and that
sacrificed in detail to keep from cumbering the sweep of his adventure.
No attempt has been made to pass judgment on Drake's character. Like
Baranof of a later day, he was a curious mixture of the supremely
selfish egoist, and of the religious enthusiast, alternately using his
egoism as a support for his religion, and his religion as a support for
his egoism; and each reader will probably pass judgment on Drake
according as the reader's ideal of manhood is the altruist or the
egoist, the Christ-type or "the great blond beast" of modern
philosophic thought, the man supremely indifferent to all but self,
glorying in triumph though it be knee-deep in blood. Nor must we
moderns pass too hypocritical judgment on the hero of the Drake type.
Drake had invested capital in his venture. He had the blessing of
Church and State on what he was about to do, and what he did was _to
take_ what he had strength and dexterity to take independent of the Ten
Commandments, which is not so far different from many commercial
methods of to-day. We may appear as unmoral in our methods to future
judges as Drake appears to us. Just as no attempt has been made to
analyze Drake's character--to balance his lack of morals with his
courage--so minor details, that would have led off from the main
current of events, have been omitted. For instance, Drake spilled very
little Spanish blood and was Christian in his treatment of the Indians;
but are these credit marks offset by his brutality toward the black
servants whom the pirates picked up among the Spaniards, of whom one
poor colored girl was marooned on a Pacific island to live or die or
rot? To be sure, the Portuguese pilot taken from a scuttled caravel
off the west coast of Africa on the way out, and forced to pilot Drake
to the Pacific, was well treated on the voyage. At least, there is no
mention to the contrary; but when Drake had finished with the fellow,
though the English might have known very well what terrible vengeance
Spain would take, the pilot was dumped off on the coast of New Spain,
where, one old record states, he was tortured, almost torn to pieces,
for having guided Drake.
The great, indeed, primary and only authorities for Drake's adventures
are, of course, Hakluyt, Vol. III; for the fate of the lost crews,
_Purchas' Pilgrims_, Vol. III and Vol. I, Book II, and Vol. IV; and the
_Hakluyt Society Proceedings_, 1854, which are really a reprint of _The
World Encompassed_, by Francis Fletcher, the chaplain, in 1628, with
the addition of documents contemporary with Fletcher's by unknown
writers. The title-page of _The World Encompassed_ reads almost like
an old ballad--"_for the stirring up of heroick spirits to benefit
their countries, and eternize their names by like {168} attempts_."
Kohl and Davidson's _Reports of the Coast and Geodetic Survey_, 1884
and 1886, are also invaluable as establishing Drake's land-fall in
California. Miller Christy's Silver Map of the World gives a splendid
facsimile of the medal issued to commemorate Drake's return, of which
the original is in the British Museum. Among biographers, Corbett's
_Drake_, and Barrow's _Life of Sir Francis Drake_, give full details of
his early and personal life, including, of course, his great services
in the Armada.
Furious controversy has waged over Drake on two points: Did he murder
Doughty? Did he go as far north on the west coast of America as 48
degrees? Hakluyt's account says 43 degrees; _The World Encompassed_,
by Fletcher, the chaplain, says 48 degrees, though all accounts agree
it was at 38 degrees he made harbor. I have not dealt with either
dispute, stating the bare facts, leaving each reader to draw his own
conclusions, though it seems to me a little foolish to contend that the
claim of the 48th degree was an afterthought interpolated by the writer
to stretch British possessions over a broader swath; for even two
hundred years after the issue of the Silver Map of the World, when Cook
was on this coast, so little was known of the west shores of America by
Englishmen that men were still looking out for a Gamaland, or imaginary
continent in the middle of the Pacific.
The words of the narrative bearing on America are: "We came to 42
degree of North latitude, where on the night following (June 3) we
found such alterations of heat, into extreme and nipping cold, that our
men in general did grievously complain thereof, some of them feeling
their health much impaired thereby; neither was it that this chanced in
the night alone, but the day following carried with it not only the
markes, but the stings and force of the night. . .; besides that the
pinching and biting air was nothing altered, the very ropes of our ship
were stiffe, and the rain which fell was an unnatural congealed and
frozen substance so that we seemed to be rather in the frozen Zone than
any where so neere unto the sun or these hotter climates . . . it came
to that extremity in sayling but two degrees farther to the northward
in our course, that though seamen lack not good stomachs . . . it was a
question whether hands should feed their mouths, or rather keepe from
the pinching cold that did benumme them . . . our meate as soone as it
was remooved from the fire, would presently in a manner be frozen up,
and our ropes and tackling in a few days were growne to that
stiffnesse . . . yet would not our general be discouraged but as well
by comfortable speeches, of the divine providence, and of God's loving
care over his children, out of the Scriptures . . . the land in that
part of America, beares farther out into the West than we before
imagined, we were neerer on it than we were aware; yet the neerer still
we came unto it, the more extremity of cold did sease upon us. The
fifth day of June, we were forced by contrary windes to runne in with
the shoare, which we then first descried, and to cast anchor in a bad
bay, the best roade we could for the present meete with, where we were
not without some danger by reason of the many extreme gusts and flawes
that beate upon us, which if they ceased, and were still at any
time . . . there followed most vile, thicke and stinking fogges against
which the sea prevailed nothing {169} . . . to go further North, the
extremity of the cold would not permit us and the winds directly bent
against us, having once gotten us under sayle againe, commanded us to
the Southward whether we would or no.
"From the height of 48 degrees in which now we were to 38, we found the
land by coasting alongst it, to be but low and plaine--every hill
whereof we saw many but none were high, though it were in June, and the
sunne in his nearest approach . . . being covered with snow. . . . In
38 deg. 30 min. we fell with a convenient and fit harborough and June
17 came to anchor therein, where we continued till the 23rd day of July
following . . . neither could we at any time in whole fourteen days
together find the aire so cleare as to be able to take the height of
sunne or starre . . . after our departure from the heate we always
found our bodies, not as sponges, but strong and hardened, more able to
beare out cold, though we came out of the excesse of heate, then
chamber champions could hae beene, who lye in their feather beds till
they go to sea.
". . . Trees without leaves, and the ground without greennes in these
months of June and July . . . as for the cause of this extremity, they
seem . . . chiefest we conceive to be the large spreading of the Asian
and American continent, which (somewhat Northward of these parts) if
they be not fully joyned, yet seeme they to come very neere one to the
other. From whose high and snow-covered mountains, the North and
Northwest winds (the constant visitants of those coasts) send abroad
their frozen nimphes, to the infecting of the whole aire with this
insufferable sharpnesse. . . . Hence comes the generall squalidnesse
and barrennesse of the countrie, hence comes it that in the midst of
their summer, the snow hardly departeth . . . from their hils at all,
hence come those thicke mists and most stinking fogges, which increase
so much the more, by how much higher the pole is raised . . . also from
these reasons we coniecture that either there is no passage at all
through these Northern coasts which is most likely or if there be, that
yet it is unnavigable. . . . Add here unto, that though we searched
the coast diligently, even unto the 48 degree, yet found we not the
land to trend so much as one point in any place towards the East, but
rather running on continually Northwest, as if it went directly to meet
with Asia; and even in that height, when we had a franke winde to have
carried us through, had there been a passage, yet we had a smoothe and
calme sea, with ordinary flowing and renewing, which could not have
beene had there been a frete; of which we rather infallibly concluded,
then coniectured, that there was none.
"The next day, after coming to anchor in the aforesaid harbour, the
people of the countrey showed themselves, sending off a man with great
expedition to us in a canow, who being yet but a little from the
shoare, and a great way from our ship, spake to us continually as he
came rowing in. And at last at a reasonable distance, staying himself,
he began more solemnly a long and tedious oration, after his manner,
using in the deliverie thereof, many gestures and signes, mouing his
hands, turning his head and body many wayes, and after his oration
ended, with great show and reverence and submission returned backe to
shoare again. He shortly came againe the second time in like manner,
{170} and so the third time, when he brought with him (as a present
from the rest) a bunch of feathers, much like the feathers of a blacke
crowe, very neatly and artificially gathered upon a string, and drawne
together into a round bundle, being verie cleane and finely cut, and
bearing in length an equall proportion one with another a special
cognizance (as we afterwards observed) which they . . . weare on their
heads. With this also he brought a little basket made of rushes, and
filled with an herbe which they called Tobah. Both which being tyed to
a short rodde, he cast into our boate. Our generall intended to have
recompenced him immediately with many good things he would have
bestowed on him; but entering into the boate to deliver the same, he
could not be drawne to receive them by any meanes, save one hat, which
being cast into the water out of the ship, he took up (refusing utterly
to meddle with any other thing) though it were upon a board put off
unto him, and so presently made his returne. After which time our
boate could row no way, but wondering at us as at gods, they would
follow the same with admiration. . . .
"The third day following, viz., the 21, our ship having received a
leake at sea, was brought to anchor neerer the shoare, that her goods
being landed she might be repaired; but for that we were to prevent any
danger that might chance against our safety, our Generall first of all
landed his men, with all necessary provision, to build tents and make a
fort for the defence of ourselves and our goods . . . which when the
people of the country perceived us doing, as men set on fire to war in
defence of their countrie, in great hast and companee, with such
weapons as they had, they came down unto us, and yet with no hostile
meaning or intent to hurt us: standing when they drew neerer, as men
ravished in their mindes, with the sight of such things, as they never
had scene or heard of before that time: their errand being rather with
submission and feare to worship us as Gods, than to have warre with us
as mortall men: which thing, as it did partly show itselfe at that
instant, so did it more and more manifest itself afterwards, during the
whole time of our abode amongst them. At this time, being veilled by
signs to lay from them their bowes and arrowes, they did as they were
directed and so did all the rest, as they came more and more by
companies unto him, growing in a little while to a great number, both
of men and women.
". . . Our Generall, with all his company, used all meanes possible
gently to intreate them, bestowing upon each of them liberally good and
necessary things to cover their nakedness, withall signifying unto them
we were no Gods but men, and had need of such things to cover our owne
shame, teaching them to use them to the same ends, for which cause also
we did eate and drinke in their presence, . . . they bestowed upon our
Generall and diverse of our company, diverse things as feathers, cawles
of networke, the quivers of their arrowes, made of faune skins, and the
very skins of beasts that their women wore upon their bodies . . . they
departed with joy to their houses, which houses are digged round within
the earth, and have from the uppermost brimmes of the circle, clefts of
wood set up, and joyned close together at the top, like our spires on
the steeple of a church, which being covered with earth, . . . are very
warme; the doore {171} in the most of them performs the office also of
a chimney to let out the smoake; it's made in bignesse and fashion like
to an ordinary scuttle in a ship, and standing slope-wise; the beds are
the hard ground, onely with rushes strewed upon it and lying round
about the house, have their fire in the middest, . . . with all
expedition we set up our tents, and intrenched ourselves with walls of
stone. . . . Against the end of two daies, there was gathered together
a great assembly of men, women and children, bringing with them as they
had before done, feathers and bagges of Tobah for present, or rather
for sacrifices upon this persuasion that we were Gods.
"When they came to the top of the hill at the bottom whereof we had
built our fort, they made a stand;" . . . "this bloodie sacrifice
(against our wils) being thus performed, our generall, with his
companie, in the presence of those strangers, fell to prayers; and by
signes in lifting up our eyes and hands to heaven, signified unto them
that that God whom we did serve and whom they ought to worship, was
above: beseeching God, if it were his good pleasure, to open by some
meanes their blinded eyes, that they might in due time be called to the
knowledge of Him, the true and everliving God, and of Jesus Christ,
whom he hath sent, the salvation of the Gentiles. In the time of which
prayers, singing of Psalmes, and reading of certaine Chapters in the
Bible, they sate very attentively, and observing the end of every
pause, with one voice still cried 'oh' greatly rejoicing in our
exercises."
* * * * * *
"Our generall caused to be set up a monument of our being there, as
also of her majesties and successors right and title to that kingdom,
namely a plate of brasse, fast nailed to a great and firme poste;
whereon is engraven her graces' name, and the day and year of our
arrival there, and of the free giving up of the province and kingdom,
both by the king and people, unto her majesties' hands: together with
her highnesse picture and arms, in a piece of sixpence current English
monie, shewing itselfe by a hole made of purpose through the plate;
underneath was likewise engraven the name of our Generall. . . .
"The Spaniards never had any dealings, or so much as set a foote in
this country, the utmost of their discoveries reaching onely to many
degrees Southward of this place."
The Spanish version of Drake's burial is, that the body was weighted
with shot at the heels and heaved over into the sea, without coffin or
ceremony.
{172}