men prone to wonder at every strange thing. What opinion others
had thereof, and chiefly the General himself, I forbear to deliver.
But he took it for _Bonum Omen_, rejoicing that he was to war
against such an enemy, if it were the devil.

We have no doubt that he did think it was the devil; men in those days
believing really that evil was more than a principle or a necessary
accident, and that in all their labour for God and for right, they must
make their account to have to fight with the devil in his proper person.
But if we are to call it superstition, and if this were no devil in the
form of a roaring lion, but a mere great seal or sea-lion, it is a more
innocent superstition to impersonate so real a power, and it requires a
bolder heart to rise up against it and defy it in its living terror,
than to sublimate it away into a philosophical principle, and to forget
to battle with it in speculating on its origin and nature. But to follow
the brave Sir Humfrey, whose work of fighting with the devil was now
over, and who was passing to his reward. The 2nd of September the
General came on board the 'Golden Hinde' 'to make merry with us.' He
greatly deplored the loss of his books and papers, but he was full of
confidence from what he had seen, and talked with eagerness and warmth
of the new expedition for the following spring. Apocryphal gold-mines
still occupying the minds of Mr. Hayes and others, they were persuaded
that Sir Humfrey was keeping to himself some such discovery which he had
secretly made, and they tried hard to extract it from him. They could
make nothing, however, of his odd, ironical answers, and their sorrow at
the catastrophe which followed is sadly blended with disappointment that
such a secret should have perished. Sir Humfrey doubtless saw America
with other eyes than theirs, and gold-mines richer than California in
its huge rivers and savannahs.

Leaving the issue of this good hope (about the gold), (continues Mr.
Hayes), to God, who only knoweth the truth thereof, I will hasten
to the end of this tragedy, which must be knit up in the person of
our General, and as it was God's ordinance upon him, even so the
vehement persuasion of his friends could nothing avail to divert him
from his wilful resolution of going in his frigate; and when he was
entreated by the captain, master, and others, his well-wishers in
the 'Hinde,' not to venture, this was his answe