ring plunderers really, invaded
Siberia, defeated the few scattered Tartar tribes, and annexed the
entire waste of Northern Asia to the Russian crown. Never again was this
to be a secretly growing, unknown world from which vast hordes might
suddenly burst forth on Europe.[15]

[15] See _Cossack Conquest of Siberia_, page 181.

THE ELIZABETHAN AGE

Turn now to England, emerging at last from the exhaustion of the Wars of
the Roses to assert her place among the great powers of the world.
Philip and Elizabeth, restrained by other anxieties, might maintain a
hollow peace at home: they could not control the rising spirits of the
English nation. English sailors, the most daring in the world,
penetrated all seas. Spanish and Portuguese ships had been almost
everywhere before them. The North was still half a century behind the
South in progress. Yet the difference is worth noting. On the southern
ships a few gallant, aristocratic leaders headed a crowd of trembling
peasants, ever begging to be taken home, sometimes mutinying through
very frenzy of fear. On England's ships each sailor was as stubborn and
dauntless as his chief, differing from him only in the intellect to
command.

Such men as these were little like to accept Spanish claims to all the
wealth of all the new lands of the world. They cruised at will, and
fought the Spaniards successfully wherever found. Frobisher began the
long and dreary search for the "northwest passage," by which the
northern countries of Europe might send ships to round America and reach
Asia as Magellan had done to southward.[16] Gilbert raised his country's
standard over Newfoundland, England's first clearly established
possession beyond seas.[17] The memory of the Cabots' voyages was
revived, and in their name England claimed the North American coast. Sir
Walter Raleigh attempted to plant a colony, and called the new land
Virginia in honor of the Virgin Queen.[18]

[16] See _Search for the Northwest Passage by Frobisher_, page 156.

[17] See _First Colony of England beyond Seas_, page 198.

[18] See _Naming of Virginia: The Lost Colony_, page 211.

To Drake, greatest of all these wild adventurers, was it left to embroil
his country utterly with Spain. He followed Magellan in circumnavigating
the globe, and wherever he went he left a track of plundered Spanish
settlements behind. Elizabeth was in despair; she alternately knighted
him a