bout the ocean

"tyll hunger inforced us to seek the lands for birdes were thought
very good meate, rattes, cattes, mise and dogges, none escaped that
might be gotten, parrates and monkayes that we had in great prise
were thought then very profitable if they served the tourne one
dinner."

The return home in this instance was truly a sorry one, for the
survivors had left not only gold behind them, but the corpses of so many
brave comrades.

On the whole, the exploits of Hawkins were considerably overshadowed by
those of his young relative, Sir Francis Drake, who had begun to
adventure on his own account in 1570, and who haunted the Spanish
Indies, determined to avenge the treatment he and his comrades had
received at San Juan de Ulloa. He ransacked Nombre de Dios and
Cartagena, explored the Gulf of Darien, made friends with the Indians
who inhabited the place, and captured many Spanish merchantmen,
repulsing the attacks of the Spanish men-of-war.

Drake now crossed the Isthmus of Panama, and--the first foreigner to
accomplish the feat--set eyes on the Pacific Ocean, in which he swore to
cruise before he had finished his career. Here, moreover, having failed
to capture one royal treasure convoy, his good fortune led him to meet
with a second, and the gold and silver borne by the laden mules became
the property of himself and his men.

Drake started out on his next voyage in 1577, and fulfilled his purpose
of breasting the waters of the Pacific; for, after various adventures on
the east coast of the Continent, he sailed through the Straits of
Magellan, and found himself in the ocean that, until then, had been
traversed by Spanish vessels alone. His arrival came as a bolt from the
blue to the Spaniards, who had not dreamed of the possibility of the
invasion of the Pacific, the waters of which they had grown to consider
as sacred to themselves. The alarm spread like wild-fire along the whole
length of that great coast. All the while Drake cruised up and down,
capturing and destroying wherever he might. Indeed, of all the
adventurers of this period, Drake was the one whose name conveyed the
greatest terror to the Spanish colonists. This was evident in all parts
of the Continent. Thus the impetuosity of his attacks and incursions in
the neighbourhood of the Guianas and Venezuela was sufficient utterly to
startle and dismay the unfortunate Spaniards.

[Illustration: THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN.]