70

FROBISHER'S SECOND VOYAG E.

brought of the passage to Cathaia." One of his seamen chanced to bring home with him a stone, as a memorial of his voyage to those distant countries; but his wife throwing it into the fire, it "glistered with a bright marquesset of gold." This accident was soon noised abroad; and the gold finers of London, being called upon to assay the stone, reported that it contained a considerable quantity of gold. Thus the hope of finding gold again became the incentive to distant voyages and geographical researches. The queen-now openly favoured the enterprise; and Frobisher again departed, in May, 1577, with three ships, one of which was equipped by Her Majesty. He sagaciously observed that the ice which encumbers the seas must be formed in the sounds or inland near the pole, and that the main sea never freezes. He steered for the strait where his preceding voyage had terminated, and sought the spot where the supposed gold ore had been picked up, but could not find on the whole island, a piece "as big as a walnut." On the neighbouring islands, however, the ore was found in large quantities. In their examination of Frobisher's Straits, they were unable to establish a pacific intercourse with the natives. Two women were seized; of whom one, being old and ugly, was thought to be a devil or a witch, and was consequently dismissed. As gold and not discovery was the avowed object of this voyage, our adventurers occupied themselves in providing a cargo, and actually got on board almost two hundred tons of the glittering mineral which they believed to be ore. When the lading was completed, they set sail homewards; and though the ships were dispersed by violent storms, they all arrived safely in different ports of England.

The queen and the persons engaged in this adventure were delighted to find "that the matter of the gold ore had appearance and made show of great riches and profit, and that the hope of the passage to Cathaia, by this last voyage greatly increased." The queen gave the name of Meta Incognita to the newly-discovered country, on which it was resolved to establish a colony. For this purpose a fleet of fifteen ships

FROBISHER'S THIRD VOYAGE.

71

was got ready, and one hundred persons appointed to form a settlement, and remain there the whole year, keeping with them three of the ships; the other twelve were to bring back cargoes of gold ore. Frobisher was appointed admiral in general of the expedition, and on taking leave received from the queen a gold chain, as a mark of her approbation of his past conduct. The fleet sailed on the 31st of May, 1578, and in three weeks discovered Friezeland, of which possession was formally taken, and then held its course direct to Frobisher's Straits. The voyage hitherto had been prosperous; but distresses and vexations of every kind thwarted the attempt to fix a colony. Violent storms dispersed the fleet; drift-ice choked up the strait; one small bark, on board of which was the wooden house intended for the settlers, was crushed by the icebergs, and instantly went down; thick fogs, heavy snow, with tides and currents of extraordinary violence, bewildered the mariners, and involved them in endless distresses. At length, after enduring extreme hardships, it was resolved to return, and postpone to the ensuing year the attempt to make a settlement in the country. The storms which had frustrated the object of the expedition, pursued the flect in its passage homeward; the ships were scattered, but arrived at various ports of England before the commencement of October.

The Busse of Bridgewater, in her homeward passage, fell in with a large island to the south-east of Friezeland, in latitude 57, which had never before been discovered, and sailed three days along the coast, the land appearing to be fertile, full of wood, and a fine champagne country. On this authority the island was laid down in their charts, but was never afterwards seen, and certainly does not exist; though a bank has recently been sounded upon, which has revived the opinion that the Friezeland of Zeno and the land seen by the Busse of Bridgewater were one and the same island, which has been since swallowed up by an earthquake.

Success seems to have deserted Frobisher after his first voyage, which alone indeed had discovery for its object.

2

GILBERT'S VOYAGE.

When the sanguine expectations which had been founded on the supposed discovery of gold were disappointed, his voyages were looked upon as a total failure; and he appears himself, for a time, to have fallen into neglect. But in, 1585, he served with Sir Francis Drake, in the West Indies; three years later he commanded one of the largest ships of the fleet which defeated the Spanish armada; and his gallant conduct on that trying occasion procured him the honour of knighthood.

Frobisher's zeal in the pursuit of north-western discoveries is supposed to have been fostered by the writings of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a gentleman of brilliant talents and romantic temper. When we contemplate the early discoveries of the Spaniards and Portuguese, we see needy adventurers, and men of desperate character and fortune, pursuing gain or licentiousness, with violence and bloodshed. But the English navigators, who, in the reign of Elizabeth, sought to extend our knowledge of the globe, were men of a different stamp, and driven forward by motives of a more honourable nature. They undertook the most difficult navigations, through seas perpetually agitated by storms and encumbered with ice, in vessels of the most frail construction and of small burden; they encountered all the difficulties and distresses of a rigorous climate, and, in most cases, with a very distant or with no prospect of ultimate pecuniary advantages. Sir Humphrey Gilbert was one of those gallant spirits, who engaged in the career of discovery chiefly from the love of fame and thirst. of achievement. In 1578, he obtained a patent, authorizing him to undertake western discoveries, and to possess lands unsettled by Christian princes or their subjects.

The grant in the patent was made perpetual, but was at the same time declared void, unless acted upon within six years. In compliance with this condition, Sir Humphrey prepared, in 1583, to take possession of the northern parts of America and Newfoundland. In the same year, Queen Elizabeth conferred on his younger brother, Adrian Gilbert, the privilege of making discoveries of a passage to China and the Moluccas, by the north-westward, north-eastward, or north

LOSS OF THE DELIGHT.

73

ward, directing the company of which he was the head, to be incorporated by the name of "The Colleagues of the Fellowship for the Discovery of the North-west Passage."

The fleet of Sir Humphrey consisted of five ships, of different burthens, from ten to two hundred tons, in which were embarked about two hundred and sixty men, including shipwrights, masons, smiths, and carpenters, besides "mineral men and refiners," and for the amusement of the crew" and allurement of the savages, they were provided of music in good variety, not omitting the least toyes, as morrice-dancers, hobby-horses, and Maylike conceits, to delight the savage people, whom they intended to win by all fair means possible." This little fleet reached Newfoundland on the 30th of July. It is noticed, that at this early period, "the Portugals and French chiefly have a notable trade of fishing on the Newfoundland Banks, where there are sometimes more than a hundred sail of ships."

On entering St. John's, possession was taken, in the queen's name, of the harbour and two hundred leagues every way; parcels of land were granted out, but the attention of the general was chiefly directed to the discovery of the precious metals.

The colony being thus apparently established, Sir Humphrey Gilbert embarked in his small frigate, the Squirrel, which was, in fact, a miserable bark of ten tons; and, taking with him two other ships, proceeded on a voyage of discovery to the southward. One of these vessels, the Delight, was soon after wrecked among the shoals near Sable Island; and of above one hundred men on board, only twelve escaped. Among those who perished were the historian and the mineralogist of the expedition; a circumstance which preyed upon the mind of Sir Humphrey, whose ardent temper fondly cherished the hope of fame and of inestimable riches. He now determined to return to England; but as his little frigate, as she is called, appeared wholly unfit to proceed on such a voyage, he was entreated not to venture in her, but to take his passage in the Golden Hinde. To these solicitations the gallant

74

LOSS OF THE SQUIRREL.

knight replied, "I will not forsake my little company going homeward, with whom I have passed so many storms and perils." When the two vessels had passed the Azores, Sir Humphrey's frigate was observed to be nearly overwhelmed by a great sea; she recovered, however, the stroke of the waves, and immediately afterwards the general was observed by those in the Hinde, sitting abaft with a book in his hand, and calling out, "Courage, my lads! we are as near Heaven by sea as by land!" The same night this little bark, and all within her, were swallowed up in the sea, and never more heard of. Such was the unfortunate end of the brave Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who may be regarded as the father of western colonization, and who was one of the chief ornaments of the most chivalrous age of English history.*

While these attempts were made to effect the colonization of the eastern shores of North America, the western were visited by an English navigator, Sir Francis Drake, during one of his marauding expeditions against the Spaniards in the Pacific. He reached the southern part of Oregon Territory in 1579. It had been previously examined, however, (in 1542), by Cabrillo, a Portuguese commander sailing in the service of Spain.

The advantages of the Newfoundland fishery were early fully appreciated by the European States, and all those which possessed a marine hastened to secure a participation in it. About the year 1578, the English vessels employed in this fishery were fifty in number. Above a hundred Spanish vessels at the same time were annually employed on those banks: there were fifty Portuguese, a hundred and fifty French, and twenty or thirty Biscayan ships; the last being chiefly engaged in the whale fishery. Among all these the English had a decided superiority in the equipment of their vessels; and they seem also to have asserted a sovereignty over those seas, founded perhaps on the discoveries of Sebastian Cabot, which was generally acquiesced in by the foreign fishermen. But the settlement made in Newfoundland by Sir Humphrey *Hakluyt, vol. iii.