o saw, but did not take a hand in, the New World. He
was a man of high courage and stubborn perseverance, and will be
remembered as the discoverer of Newfoundland and the extreme northern
mainland.

After Cabot, England took a nap of more than half a century. When she
woke again, it was to find that Spain's sleepless sons had scattered
over half the New World; and that even France and Portugal had left her
far behind. Cabot, who was not an Englishman, was the first English
explorer; and the next were Drake and Hawkins, and then Captains Amadas
and Barlow, after a lapse of seventy-five and eighty-seven years,
respectively,--during which a large part of the two continents had been
discovered, explored, and settled by other nations, of which Spain was
undeniably in the lead. Columbus, the first Spanish explorer, was not a
Spaniard; but with his first discovery began such an impetuous and
unceasing rush of Spanish-born explorers as achieved more in a hundred
years than all the other nations of Europe put together achieved here in
America's first three hundred. Cabot saw and did nothing; and three
quarters of a century later Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake--whom
old histories laud greatly, but who got rich by selling poor Africans
into slavery, and by actual piracy against unprotected ships and towns
of the colonies of Spain, with which their mother England was then at
peace--saw the West Indies and the Pacific, more than half a century
after these had become possessions of Spain. Drake was the first
Englishman to go through the Straits of Magellan,--and he did it sixty
years after that heroic Portuguese had found them and christened them
with his life-blood. Drake was probably first to see what is now
Oregon,--his only important discovery. He "took possession" of Oregon
for England, under the name of "New Albion;" but old Albion never had a
settlement there.

Sir John Hawkins, Drake's kinsman, was, like him, a distinguished
sailor, but not a real discoverer or explorer at all. Neither of them
explored or colonized the New World; and neither left much more impress
on its history than if he had never been born. Drake brought the first
potatoes to England; but the importance even of that discovery was not
dreamed of till long after, and by other men.

Captains Amadas and Barlow, in 1584, saw our coast at Cape Hatteras and
the island of Roanoke, and went away without any permanent result. The
following year Sir Richar