of the question; and after consultation with the military commanders, Drake resolved on sailing home at once by way of Florida.  He brought back with him all the colonists who had been left by Sir Richard Greenville in ‘Virginia.’  Drake had offered either to furnish them with stores, and to leave them a ship, or to take them home.  The former was accepted:  but a furious storm which ensued caused them to change their minds.  They recognized in it the hand of God, whose will it evidently was that they should no longer be sojourners in the American wilderness; and the first English settlement of ‘Virginia’ was abandoned accordingly.

Ten years afterwards (1595) Drake was again at the head of a similar expedition.  The second command was given to his old associate Hawkins, Frobisher, his Vice-Admiral in 1585, having recently died of the wound received at Crozon.  This time Nombre de Dios was taken and burnt, and 750 soldiers set out under Sir Thomas Baskerville to march to Panama:  but at the first of the three forts which the Spaniards had by this time constructed, the march had to be abandoned.  Drake did not long survive this second failure of his favourite scheme.  He was attacked by dysentery a fortnight afterwards, and in a month he died.  When he felt the hand of death upon him, he rose, dressed himself, and endeavoured to make a farewell speech to those around him.  Exhausted by the effort, he was lifted to his berth, and within an hour breathed his last.  Hawkins had died off Puerto Rico six weeks previously.

The following narrative is in the main the composition of Walter Biggs, who commanded a company of musketeers under Carlile.  Biggs was one of the five hundred and odd men who succumbed to the fever.  He died shortly after the fleet sailed from Carthagena; and the narrative was completed by some comrade.  The story of this expedition, which had inflicted such damaging blows on the Spaniards in America, was eminently calculated to inspire courage among those who were resisting them in Europe.  Cates, one of Carlile’s lieutenants, obtained the manuscript and prepared it for the press, accompanied by illustrative maps and plans.  The publication was delayed by the Spanish Armada; but a copy found its way to Holland, where it was translated into Latin, and appeared at Leyden, in a slightly abridged form, in 1588.  The original English narrative duly appeared in London in the next year.  The document called the ‘Resolution of the Land-Captains’ was inserted by Hakluyt when he reprinted the narrative in 1600.

DRAKE’S GREAT ARMADA

NARRATIVE MAINLY BY CAPTAIN WALTER BIGGS

A Summary and True Discourse of Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian Voyage, begun in the year 1585.  Wherein were taken the cities of Santiago, Santo Domingo, Carthagena, and the town of St. Augustine, in Florida.  Published by Master Thomas Cates.