Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/250

248 At the same time that Frobisher was engaged in his third and last expedition of discovery in the seas to the north of the American continent, the celebrated Francis Drake was performing the second circumnavigation of the globe; the first having been accomplished more than half a century before by the Portuguese navigator Fernando de Magalhanes, the discoverer of the strait which still bears his name. We need not advert here to the political circumstances in which Drake's enterprise originated; there is little doubt that it had the secret sanction of Elizabeth, although its primary object was to attack the possessions and plunder the ships of the Spaniards, with whom this country was then at peace. The vessels employed were the property of private individuals, friends of Drake; they were five in number, the largest, the Pelican, in which the commander of the expedition sailed, being of a hundred tons burden; the smallest, a pinnace of fifteen tons; and, including several gentlemen, the younger sons of noble families, the entire number of persons whom they carried was only one hundred and sixty-four. The little fleet sailed from Plymouth on the 15th of November, 1577. After making the coast of Brazil and entering the Rio de la Plata, Drake's ship and two others had passed through the Strait of Magelhanes, or Magellan, by the beginning of September, 1578. The southern coast of Tierra del Fuego was afterwards discovered by Drake, who then ran up along the western coast of America, as far as to latitude 48° north, collecting, at the same time, immense booty by a succession of exploits against the Spaniards, the relation of which does not belong to our present subject. Drake was the first navigator who had ever advanced to nearly so high a latitude along the North American coast. He afterwards sailed across the Pacific to the Molucca Islands and Java, and, steering thence for the Cape of Good Hope, finished his voyage round the world by returning to Plymouth, which he reached on Monday the 26th of September, 1580, after an absence of nearly two years and ten months. "The queen," says Camden, "received him graciously, and