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By the repudiation of Catharine of Aragon, Henry VIII. sundered his political connection with Spain, and opened the New World to English rivalry. He was resolute in his attempts to suppress piracy; and the navigation of his subjects flourished under his protection. The banner of St. George was often displayed in the harbors of Northern Africa and in the Levant; and now that commerce, emancipated from the limits of the inner seas, went boldly forth upon the oceans, the position of England summoned her to derive advantage from the change.

An account exists of an expedition to the north-west in 1536, conducted by Hore of London, and "assisted by the good countenance of Henry VIII." But the two ships, the Trinity and the Minion, were worn out by a passage of more than two months before they reached a harbor in Newfoundland. There the disheartened adventurers wasted away from famine and misery. In the extremity of their distress a French ship arrived, "well furnished with vittails:" of this they obtained possession by a stroke of "policie," and set sail for England. The French, following in the English ship, complained of the exchange, upon which the king, out of his own private purse, "made them full and royal recompense." In 1541 the fisheries of "Newland" were favored by an act of parliament, the first which refers to America.

The accession of Edward, in 1547, and the consequent ascendency of Protestantism, marks the era when England began to foreshadow her maritime superiority. In the first year of his reign the council advanced a hundred pounds for Cabot, "a pilot, to come out of Hispain to serve and inhabit in England." In the next year the fisheries of Newfoundland, which had suffered from exactions by the officers of the admiralty, obtained the protection of a special act, "to the intent that merchants and fishermen might use the trade of fishing freely without such charges."

In 1549 Sebastian Cabot was once more in England, brought over at the cost of the exchequer; and, "for good service done and to be done," was pensioned as grand pilot; nor would he return to Seville, though his return was officially demanded by the emperor. In March, 1551, a special reward

was bestowed by the king on "the great seaman." He seemed to set no special value on his discovery of North America; to find a shorter route to the Indies had been the dream of his youth, and it still haunted him. He had vainly tried the north-west and the south-west; he now advised to attempt a passage by the north-east, and was made president of the company of merchants who undertook the search for it.

In May, 1553, the fleet of three ships, under the command of Sir Hugh Willoughby, following the instructions of Cabot, undertook to reach China by doubling the northern promontory of Norway. The admiral, separated from his companions in a storm, was driven by the cold in September to seek shelter in a Lapland harbor. When search was made for him in the following spring, his whole company had perished from cold; Willoughby himself, whose papers showed that he had survived till January, was found dead in his cabin. Richard Chancellor, in one of the other ships, reached the harbor of Archangel. This was This was "the discovery of Russia," and the commencement of commerce by sea with that empire. A Spanish writer calls the result "a discovery of new Indies."

Soon after the accession of Mary to the English throne, the Emperor Charles V. again made an earnest request that Cabot might be sent back to his service; but the veteran refused to leave England, where, in 1556, a new company was formed for discovery, of which he was a partner and the president. He lived to an extreme old age, but the day of his death is uncertain. The discoverer of North America was one of the most remarkable men of his age. Time has spared all too few memorials of his career.

Even the intolerance of Queen Mary could not check the passion for adventure. The sea was becoming the element on which English valor was best displayed; English sailors neither feared the heats and fevers of the tropics, nor northern cold. The trade to Russia, now that the port of Archangel had been discovered, proved very lucrative; and a regular and as yet an innocent commerce was carried on with Africa. The marriage of Mary with the heir to the throne of Spain, and the enthusiasm awakened by the brilliant reception of Philip in London, excited Richard Eden to gather into a volume the history

of the most memorable maritime expeditions. Religious restraints, the thirst for rapid wealth, the desire of strange adventure, had driven the boldest spirits of Spain to the New World; their deeds had been commemorated by the copious and accurate details of their own historians; and the English, through the alliance of their sovereign made familiar with the Spanish language and literature, learned to emulate Spanish success beyond the ocean.

Elizabeth, succeeding Mary in 1558, seconded the enterprise of her subjects. They were the more proud and intractable for the short effort to make England an appendage to Spain; and the triumph of Protestantism nursed the spirit of nationality. England, now the antagonist of Philip, prepared to extend her commerce to every clime. The queen strengthened her navy, filled her arsenals, and encouraged the building of ships in England; she animated the adventurers to Russia and to Africa by her special protection; and after 1574 at least from thirty to fifty English ships came annually to the bays and banks of Newfoundland.

The press teemed with books of travels, maps, and descriptions of the earth; and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, reposing from the toils of war, engaged in the science of cosmography. A well-written argument in favor of the possibility of a northwestern passage was the fruit of his industry.

The same views were entertained by one of the boldest men who ever ventured upon the ocean. For fifteen years Martin Frobisher, an Englishman, well versed in various navigation, had revolved the design of accomplishing the discovery of the north-western passage, esteeming it "the only thing of the world that was yet left undone, by which a notable minde might be made famous and fortunate." Too poor himself to provide a ship, it was in vain that he conferred with friends; in vain he offered his services to merchants. After years of desire, Dudley, earl of Warwick, liberally promoted his design. Two small barks of twenty-five and of twenty tons', with a pinnace of ten tons' burden, composed the fleet, which was to enter gulfs that none before him had visited. As, in June, 1576, they dropped down the Thames, Queen Elizabeth waved her hand in token of favor. During a storm on the

voyage the pinnace was swallowed up by the sea; the mariners in the Michael turned their prow homeward; but Frobisher, in a vessel not much surpassing in tonnage the barge of a man-of-war, made his way, fearless and unattended, to the shores of Labrador. Among a group of American islands, in the latitude of sixty-three degrees and eight minutes, he entered what seemed to be a strait that might lead to the Indies. Great praise is due to him for penetrating far beyond all former mariners into the bays and among the islands of this Meta Incognita, this unknown goal of discovery. Yet for his main purpose his voyage was a failure.

A stone which he had brought from the frozen regions was pronounced by the refiners of London to contain gold. The news excited the wakeful avarice of the city; there were not wanting those who endeavored to purchase of Elizabeth a lease of the new lands where it had been found. A fleet was immediately fitted out to procure more of the gold rather than to make further search for the passage into the Pacific; and the queen now sent a large ship of her own to join the expedition which was to conduct to infinite opulence. More men than could be employed volunteered their services. Near the end of May, 1577, the mariners, having received the communion, embarked for the arctic El Dorado, "and with a merrie wind" soon arrived at the Orkneys. As they reached the north-eastern coast of America, icebergs encompassed them on every side. With the light of an almost perpetual summer's day the worst perils were avoided. The fleet did not advance so far as Frobisher alone had done. But large heaps of earth were found, which, even to the incredulous, seemed plainly to contain the coveted wealth; besides, spiders abounded, and "spiders were" affirmed to be "true signs of great store of gold." In freighting the ships with the supposed ore and golden sands, the admiral himself toiled like a painful laborer. How strange, in human affairs, is the mixture of sublime courage and ludicrous infatuation! What bolder maritime enterprise than, in that day, a voyage to lands lying north of Hudson Straits! What folly more egregious than to have gone there for a lading of useless earth!

The report of the returning ships led to the first attempt

of the English to gain a foothold in America. It was believed that the rich mines of the polar regions would countervail the charges of a costly adventure, and, for the security of the newly discovered lands, soldiers and discreet men were selected to become their inhabitants. A magnificent fleet of fifteen sail was assembled, in part at the expense of Elizabeth, and confided to the command of Frobisher. Sons of the English gentry embarked as volunteers; one hundred persons were chosen to form the colony, which was to secure to England a country too inhospitable to produce a tree or a shrub, yet where gold lay glistening in heaps upon the surface. Twelve vessels were to return immediately with cargoes of the ore; three were ordered to remain and aid the settlement. The north-west passage was become of less consideration; Asia itself could not vie with the riches of this hyperborean archipelago.

The fleet, as in midsummer, 1578, it approached the American coast, was bewildered among icebergs. One vessel was crushed and sunk, though the men on board were saved. In a thick fog the ships lost their course, and came into the straits which have since been called Hudson's, and which lie south of the imagined fields of gold. The admiral believed himself able to sail through to the Pacific; but his duty as a mercantile agent controlled his desire of glory as a navigator. He struggled to regain the harbor where his vessels were to be laden, and, after "getting in at one gap and out at another," escaping only by miracle from hidden rocks and unknown currents, ice, and a lee shore, he at last succeeded. The zeal of the volunteer colonists had moderated, and the disheartened sailors were ready to mutiny. The plan of a settlement was abandoned, and nothing more was done than to freight the home-bound ships with a store of mineral earth. The historians of the voyage are silent about the disposition which was made of the cargo of the fleet. The belief in regions of gold among the Esquimaux was dissipated; but there remained a firm conviction that a passage to the Pacific Ocean might yet be threaded among the icebergs and northern islands of America.

While Frobisher was thus attempting to obtain wealth and fame on the north-east coast of America, the western limits of

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