CHAPTER XXXIV

DRAKE'S FAMOUS VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD

In 1573 Drake came home with his wonderful news, and it was not long before he was eagerly talking over with the Queen a project for a raid into this very Golden Sea guarded by the Spaniards. Elizabeth promised help on condition that the object of the expedition should remain a secret. Ships were bought for "a voyage to Egypt"; there was the Pelican of one hundred tons, the Marygold of thirty tons, and a provision ship of fifty tons. A fine new ship of eighty tons, named the Elizabeth, mysteriously added itself to the little fleet, and the crews numbered in all some one hundred and fifty men. No expense was spared in the equipment of the ships. Musicians were engaged for the voyage, the arms and ammunition were of the latest pattern. The flagship was lavishly furnished: there were silver bowls and mugs and dishes richly gilt and engraved with the family arms, while the commander's cabin was full of sweet-smelling perfumes presented by the Queen herself. Thus, complete at last, Drake led his gay little squadron out of Plymouth harbour on 15th November 1577, bound for Alexandria—so the crews thought.

Little did Drake know what was before him, as, dressed in his seaman's shirt, his scarlet cap with its gold band on his head, he waved farewell to England. Who could foresee the terrible beginning, with treachery and mutiny at work, or the glorious ending when the young Englishman sailed triumphantly home after his three years' voyage—the world encompassed?

Having reached the Cape de Verde Islands in safety, the object of the expedition could no longer remain a secret, and Drake led his squadron boldly across the Atlantic Ocean.

History was to repeat itself, and the same fate was now to befall an unhappy Englishman guilty of the same conduct.

Drake had long had reason to suspect the second in command, Doughty, though he was his dear friend. He had been guilty of worse than disobedience, and the very success of the voyage was threatened. So Drake called a council together and Doughty was tried according to English law. After two days' trial he was found guilty and condemned to die. One of the most touching scenes in the history of exploration now took place. One sees the little English crews far away on that desolate shore, the ships lying at anchor in the harbour, the block prepared, the altar raised beside it, the two old friends, Drake and Doughty, kneeling side by side, then the flash of the sword and Drake holding up the head of his friend with the words, "Lo, this is the end of traitors."

He showed that the Tierra del Fuego, instead of being part of a great continent—the Terra Australis—was a group of islands with open sea to east, south, and west. This discovery was first shown on a Dutch silver medallion struck in Holland about 1581, known as The Silver Map of the world, and may be seen to-day in the British Museum.

Remarking that the ocean he was now entering would have been better called "Mare Furiosum" than "Mare Pacificum," Drake now directed his course along the western coast of South America. He found the coast of Chili, but not as the general maps had described it, "wherefore it appeareth that this part of Chili hath not been truly hitherto discovered," remarked one on board the Golden Hind. Bristling with guns, the little English ship sailed along the unknown coast, till they reached Valparaiso. Here they found a great Spanish ship laden with treasure from Peru. Quickly boarding her, the English sailors bound the Spaniards, stowed them under the hatches, and hastily transferred the cargo on to the Golden Hind. They sailed on northwards to Lima and Panama, chasing the ships of Spain, plundering as they went, till they were deeply laden with stolen Spanish treasure and knew that they had made it impossible to return home by that coast. So Drake resolved to go on northward and discover, if possible, a way home by the north. He had probably heard of Frobisher's Strait, and hoped to find a western entrance.

Little did King Drake dream, as he named his country New Albion, that Californian gold was so near. His subjects were loving and peaceable, evidently regarding the English as gods and reverencing them as such. The chronicler is eloquent in his detailed description of all the royal doings.

"And now, as the time of our departure was perceived by the people, so did the sorrows and miseries seem to increase upon them—not only did they lose on a sudden all mirth, joy, glad countenance, pleasant speeches, agility of body, but with signs and sorrowings, with heavy hearts and grieved minds, they poured out woeful complaints and moans, with bitter tears and wringing of their hands, tormenting themselves. And, as men refusing all comfort, they only accounted themselves as those whom the gods were about to forsake."

Indeed, the poor Indians looked on these Englishmen as gods, and, when the day came for them to leave, they ran to the top of the hills to keep the little ship in sight as long as possible, after which they burnt fires and made sacrifices at their departure.

"Upon the 9th of January we ran suddenly upon a rock, where we stuck fast from eight of the clock at night till four of the clock in the afternoon the next day, being, indeed, out of all hope to escape the danger; but our General, as he had always hitherto showed himself courageous, so now he and we did our best endeavours to save ourselves, which it pleased God so to bless, that in the end we cleared ourselves most happily of the danger."

Then they ran across the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope in calm weather, abusing the Portuguese for calling it the most dangerous Cape in the world for intolerable storms, for "This Cape," said the English, "is a most stately thing and the finest Cape we saw in the whole circumference of the earth."

Sir Francis Drake died at sea in 1596.

CHAPTER XXXV

DAVIS STRAIT

But even while Drake was sailing round the world, and Frobisher's search for a north-west passage had been diverted into a quest for gold, men's minds were still bent on the achievement of reaching Cathay by some northern route. A discourse by Sir Humphrey Gilbert to prove the existence of a passage by the north-west to Cathay and the East Indies, in ten chapters, was much discussed, and the Elizabethan seamen were still bent on its discovery.

"When I gave myself to the study of geography," said Sir Humphrey, "and came to the fourth part of the world, commonly called America, which by all descriptions I found to be an island environed round by sea, having on the south side of it the Strait of Magellan, on the west side the Sea of the South, which sea runneth toward the north, separating it from the east parts of Asia, and on the north side the sea that severeth it from Greenland, through which Northern Seas the Passage lieth which I take now in hand to discover."

"The people of the country," says Davis, "having espied our ships, came down unto us in their canoes, holding up their right hand toward the sun. We doing the like, the people came aboard our ships, men of good stature, unbearded, small-eyed, and of tractable conditions. We bought the clothes from their backs, which were all made of seals' skins and birds' skins, their buskins, their hose, their gloves, all being commonly sewed and well dressed."

So Davis rearranged his crews and provisions, and with the Moonshine and a selection of his best men he determined to voyage on "as God should direct him," while the Mermaid should carry the sick and feeble and fainthearted home. Davis then crossed over the strait called by his name and explored the coast about Cumberland Sound. Again he tried here to discover the long-sought passage, but the brief summer season was almost past and he had to content himself with exploring the shores of Labrador, unconsciously following the track made by John Cabot eighty-nine years before.

Leaving his somewhat discontented crews to go fishing off the coast of Labrador, he took the little twenty-ton pinnace, with a small party of brave spirits like his own, and made his way northwards in a free and open sea. The weather was hot, land was visible on both sides, and the English mariners were under the impression that they were sailing up a gulf. But the passage grew wider and wider, till Davis found himself with the sea all open to west and north. He had crossed the Arctic Circle and reached the most northerly point ever yet reached by an explorer. Seeing on his right a lofty cliff, he named it "Sanderson his Hope," for it seemed to give hope of the long-sought passage to Cathay.

It was a memorable day in the annals of discovery, 30th June 1587, when Davis reached this famous point on the coast of Greenland. "A bright blue sea extended to the horizon on the north and west, obstructed by no ice, but here and there a few majestic icebergs with peaks snowy shooting up into the sky." To the eastward were the granite mountains of Greenland, and beyond them the white line of the mightiest glacier in the world. Rising immediately above the tiny vessel was the beetling wall of Hope Sanderson, with its summit eight hundred and fifty feet above sea-level. At its base the sea was a sheet of foam and spray. It must have been a scene like fairyland, for, as Davis remarked, there was "no ice towards the north, but a great sea, free, large, very salt and blue, and of an unsearchable depth."

"This Davis hath been three times employed; why hath he not found the passage?" said the folk at home when he returned and reported his doings. How little they realised the difficulties of the way. The commander of the twenty-ton Ellen had done more than any man had done before him in the way of Arctic exploration. He had discovered seven hundred and thirty-two miles of coast from Cape Farewell to Sanderson's Hope; he had examined the whole coast of Labrador; he had "converted the Arctic regions from a confused myth into a defined area." "He lighted Baffin into his bay. He lighted Hudson into his strait. He lighted Hans Egede to the scene of his Greenland labour." And more than this, says his enthusiastic biographer: "His true-hearted devotion to the cause of Arctic discovery, his patient scientific research, his loyalty to his employers, his dauntless gallantry and enthusiasm form an example which will be a beacon-light to maritime explorers for all time to come."

CHAPTER XXXVI

BARENTS SAILS TO SPITZBERGEN

Surely no more graphic summary of disaster has ever appeared than these words penned three hundred and fourteen years ago, which cry to us down the long, intervening ages of privation and suffering endured in the cause of science.

His reports of Nova Zembla encouraged the merchants of Amsterdam to persevere in their search for the kingdoms of Cathay and China by the north-east, and a second expedition was fitted out under Barents the following year; but it started too late to accomplish much, and we must turn to the third expedition for the discovery which has for ever made famous the name of William Barents. It was yet early in the May of 1596 when he sailed from Amsterdam with two ships for the third and last time, bound once more for the frozen northern seas. By 1st June he had reached a region where there was no night, and a few days later a strange sight startled the whole crew, "for on each side of the sun there was another sun and two rainbows more, the one compassing round about the suns and the other right through the great circle," and they found they were "under 71 degrees of the height of the Pole."

Many things astonished the navigators here. Although they were in such high latitudes, they saw grass and leafy trees and such animals as bucks and harts, while several degrees to the south "there groweth neither leaves nor grass nor any beasts that eat grass or leaves, but only such beasts as eat flesh, as bears and foxes."

By 1st July he had explored the western shore and was sailing south to Bear Island. He never landed on the coast of Spitzbergen: so we have no further account of this Arctic discovery. Sailing across the wide northern sea now known as Barents Sea, he made land again in the north of Nova Zembla, and, hugging the western shore, came to Ice Point. Here they were sorely harassed by Polar bears and floating ice and bitter gales of wind. Still they coasted on till they had rounded the northern end of Nova Zembla and unexpectedly sailed into a good harbour where they could anchor. The wind now blew with redoubled vigour, the "ice came mightily driving in" until the little ship was nearly surrounded, "and withal the wind began more and more to rise and the ice still drave harder and harder, so that our boat was broken in pieces between the ship and the ice, and it seemed as if the ship would be crushed in pieces too."

As the August days passed on, they tried to get out of their prison, but it was impossible, and there was nothing for it but to winter "in great cold, poverty, misery, and grief" in this bleak and barren spot. The successful pilot was to explore no more, but the rest of the tragic tale must be shortly told. With the ice heaping high, "as the salt hills that are in Spain," and the ship in danger of going to pieces, they collected trees and roots driven on to the desolate shores from Tartary, "wherewith as if God had purposely sent them unto us we were much comforted." Through the September days they drew wood across the ice and snow to build a house for the winter. Only sixteen men could work and they were none too strong and well.

"They looked pitifully upon one another, being in great fear that if the extremity of the cold grew to be more and more we should all die there with the cold." Christmas came and went and they comforted one another by remembering that the sun was as low as it could go, and that it must begin to come to them again; but "as the day lengthens, so the cold strengthens," and the snow now lay deeper until it covered the roof of their house.

The New Year found them still imprisoned, "with great cold, danger, and disease." January, February, March, April passed and still the little ship was stuck fast in the ice. But as the sun began to gain power, hope revived, and they began to repair their boats, to make new sails, and repair tackle. They were too weak and ill to do much work, but by the middle of June the boats were fairly ready and they could cut a way through the ice to the open sea. This was their only hope of escape, to leave the ship behind and embark in two little open boats for the open sea.

"Then William Barents wrote a letter, which he put into a musket's charge and hanged it up in the chimney, showing how we came out of Holland to sail to the kingdom of China, and how we had been forced in our extremity to make that house and had dwelt ten months therein, and how we were forced to put to sea in two small open boats, for that the ship lay fast in the ice."

Barents himself was now too ill to walk, so they carried him to one of the little boats, and on 14th June 1597 the little party put off from their winter quarters and sailed round to Ice Point. But the pilot was dying. "Are we about Ice Point?" he asked feebly. "If we be, then I pray you lift me up, for I must view it once again."

Then suddenly the wind began to rise, driving the ice so fast upon them "that it made our hair stand upright upon our heads, it was so fearful to behold, so that we thought verily that it was a foreshadowing of our last end."

They drew the boats up on to the ice and lifted the sick commander out and laid him on the icy ground, where a few days later he died—"our chief guide and only pilot on whom we reposed ourselves next under God." The rest of the story is soon told.

On 1st November 1597 some twelve gaunt and haggard men, still wearing caps of white fox and coats of bearskin, having guided their little open boats all the way from Nova Zembla, arrived at Amsterdam and told the story of their exploration to the astonished merchants, who had long since given them up as dead.

It was not till 1871 that Barents' old winter quarters on Nova Zembla were discovered. "There stood the cooking-pans over the fireplace, the old clocks against the wall, the arms, the tools, the drinking vessels, the instruments and the books that had beguiled the weary hours of that long night, two hundred and seventy-eight years ago." Among the relics were a pair of small shoes and a flute which had belonged to a little cabin-boy who had died during the winter.

CHAPTER XXXVII

HUDSON FINDS HIS BAY