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 SIR FRANCIS DRAKE 181 cent, and sailing to the Azores, made prize of a large and wealthy ship on its way from the Indies. Still more eminent were his services against the Armada in the following year, in which he served as vice-admiral under Lord Howard of Effingham. But these are well-known passages of history, and we have shortened our account of them, to relate at more length the early incidents of Drake's ad- venturous life. In 1589 Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norris were joined in the command of an expedition, meant to deliver Portugal from the dominion of Spain. This failed, as many expeditions have done in which the sea and land services were meant to act together ; and as usual, each party threw the blame on the other. Drake's plan appears to have been most judicious : it was at least accordant with his character, downright and daring. He wished to sail straight for Lisbon and surprise the place ; but Norris was bent on landing at Corunna, where he did indeed some harm to the Spaniards, but no service toward the real objects of the expedition. When the land forces did at last besiege Lisbon, Drake was unwill- ing or unable to force his way up the Tagus to co-operate with them, and for this he was afterward warmly blamed by Norris. He defended himself by stat- ing that the time misspent by the English at Corunna, had been well employed by the Spaniards in fortifying Lisbon ; and we fully believe that neither fear nor jealousy would have made him hesitate at anything which he thought to be for the good of the service. This miscarriage, though for a time it cast something of a cloud upon Drake's fame, did not prevent his being again employed in 1595, when the queen, at the suggestion of himself and Sir John Hawkins, determined to send out another expedition against Spanish America, under those two emi- nent navigators, the expenses of which were in great part to be defrayed by themselves and their friends. Great hope was naturally conceived of this expe^ dition, the largest which had yet been sent against that quarter, for it consisted of thirty vessels and 2,500 men. The chief object was to sail to Nombre de Dios, march to Panama, and there seize the treasure from Peru. But the blow, which should have been struck immediately, was delayed by a feint on the part of the Spaniards to invade England ; the Plate fleet arrived in safety, and the Spanish colonies were forewarned. Hawkins died, it was said of grief at the ruined pros- pects of the expedition, November i2th, while the fleet lay before Porto Rico; and on the same evening Drake had a narrow escape from a cannon-ball, which carried the stool from under him as he sat at supper and killed two of his chief officers. Repulsed from Porto Rico, the admiral steered for the Spanish main, where he burnt several towns, and among them Nombre de Dios. He then sent a strong detachment of 750 men against Panama ; but they found the capture of that city impracticable. Soon afterward he fell sick of a fever, and died Janu- ary 28, 1596. His death, like that of his coadjutor, is attributed to mental dis- tress, and nothing is more probable than that disappointment may have made that noxious climate more deadly. Hints of poisoning were thrown out, but this is a surmise easily and often lightly made. "Thus," says Fuller, in his " Holy State," "an extempore performance, scarce heard to be begun before we hear it