1576, Sir Martin Frobisher set out to find a northwest passage to Asia.  Of course he failed; but in that and two later voyages he cruised about the shores of our continent and gave his name to Frobisher’s Bay.[2] Next came Sir Francis Drake, the greatest seaman of his age.  He left England in 1577, crossed the Atlantic, sailed down the South American coast, passed through the Strait of Magellan, and turning northward coasted along South America, Mexico, and California, in search of a northeast passage to the Atlantic.  When he had gone as far north as Oregon the weather grew so cold that his men began to murmur, and putting his ship about, he sailed southward along our Pacific coast in search of a harbor, which in June, 1579, he found near the present city of San Francisco.  There he landed, and putting up a post nailed to it a brass plate on which was the name of Queen Elizabeth, and took possession of the country.[3] Despairing of finding a short passage to England, Drake finally crossed the Pacific and reached home by way of the Cape of Good Hope.  He had sailed around the globe.[4]

[Footnote 1:  For Cabot’s voyages read Fiske’s Discovery of America, Vol.  II., pp. 2-15.]

[Footnote 2:  See map of 1515.]

[Footnote 3:  The white cliffs reminded Drake strongly of the cliffs of Dover, and as one of the old names of England was Albion (the country of the white cliffs), he called the land New Albion.]

[Footnote 4:  For Drake read E.T.  Payne’s Voyages of Elizabethan Seamen.]

%16.  Gilbert and Ralegh attempt to found a Colony.%—­While Drake was making his voyage, another gallant seaman, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, was given (by Queen Elizabeth) any new land he might discover in America.  His first attempt (1579) was a failure, and while on his way home from a landing on Newfoundland (1583), his ship, with all on board, went down in a storm at sea.  The next year (1584) his half-brother, Sir Walter Ralegh, one of the most accomplished men of his day and a great favorite with Queen Elizabeth, obtained permission from the Queen to make a settlement on any part of the coast of America not already occupied by a Christian power; and he at once sent out an expedition.  The explorers landed on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina, and came home with such a glowing description of the “good land” they had found that the Virgin Queen called it “Virginia,” in honor of herself, and Ralegh determined to colonize it.[1]

[Footnote 1:  For Ralegh read E. Gosse’s Raleigh (in English Worthies Series); Louise Creighton’s Sir W. Ralegh (Historical Biographies Series).]

%17.  Roanoke Colony; the Potato and Tobacco.%—­In 1585, accordingly, 108 emigrants under Ralph Lane left England and began to build a town on Roanoke Island.  They were ill suited for this kind of pioneer life, and were soon in such distress that, had not Sir Francis Drake in one of his voyages happened to touch at Roanoke, they would have starved to death.  Drake, seeing their helplessness, carried them home to England.  Yet their life on the island was not without results, for they took back with them the potato, and some dried tobacco leaves which the Indians had taught them to smoke.