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250 from transporting colonies into such parts of them as were not already settled. Nor, she concluded, could she or any other prince be with any reason prevented from freely navigating that vast ocean, seeing the use of the sea and air is common to all; "neither can a title to the ocean belong to any people or private persons, forasmuch as neither nature nor public use and custom permitteth any possession thereof." This high tone, never before so distinctly taken by the English government, and never afterwards lowered, was mainly inspired by Drake's brilliant exploits.

The next voyages of discovery that fall to be mentioned after Drake's circumnavigation are the three made by John Davis in quest of a north-west passage: the first in 1585, in which he sailed as far north as the 73rd degree of latitude, and discovered the strait to which he has left his name; the second in 1586, in which he made the attempt to penetrate to the Pacific at a point farther to the south; the third in 1587, in which he again ascended the strait he had discovered two years before, with no better success than at first. In these attempts Davis was encouraged and assisted, not only by several members of the mercantile community, but by Burleigh, Walsingham, and others of the queen's ministers and the nobility.

Meanwhile another voyage round the world was performed by another Englishman, Mr. Thomas Cavendish, the son of a gentleman of property in Suffolk, who sailed from Plymouth with three vessels on the 21st of July, 1586, and, after a course both of navigation and of hostilities against the Spaniards strongly resembling that pursued by Drake, finished his circumnavigation by returning to the same port on the 9th of September, 1588, having thus been absent little more than two years and one month. This voyage, however, was not productive of any geographical discoveries of importance, though it corrected some of the statements of preceding navigators. In a second South-Sea voyage, undertaken by Cavendish in 1591, Captain John Davis, mentioned above, who commanded one of the ships, had the fortune to discover