l others. Strange to say, it has always been the exact reverse."

Though discovered by John and Sebastian Cabot in 1494, "the
twenty-fourth of June at five o'clock in the morning," it was not
until ninety years later that the island was formally organized as an
English colony (Aug. 5, 1582, by Sir Humphrey Gilbert).

The persecutions of Bloody Mary and the massacre of St. Bartholomew
had roused the indignation of Englishmen to the highest pitch. They
were ready for any risk in open war against France and Spain, but
Queen Elizabeth was always trying to shirk responsibility; and so the
sea-captains who would avenge the wrongs done to the Protestants were
obliged to run the risk of being condemned as pirates.

One of them wrote to Queen Elizabeth, Nov. 6, 1577, offering to fit
out ships, well armed, for the Banks of Newfoundland, where some
twenty-five thousand fishermen went out from France, Spain, and
Portugal every summer to catch the food of their Catholic fast days.
He proposed to treat these fishermen as the Huguenots of France had
been treated,--to bring away the best of their ships, and to burn the
rest. Nine days after the date of this letter Francis Drake sailed
from Plymouth, commanding a fleet of five ships, equipped by a company
of private adventurers, of whom Queen Elizabeth was the largest
shareholder. Fortunately, they never committed the horrible crime
suggested in that letter. In those five ships, says Froude, lay the
germ of Great Britain's ocean empire.

In 1585 Sir John Hawkins, who had meanwhile annexed Newfoundland to
the English Dominion, proposed again to take a fleet to the Fishing
Banks, whither half the sailors of Spain and Portugal went annually to
fish for cod.

He would destroy them all at one fell swoop, cripple the Spanish
marine for years, and leave the galleons to rot in the harbors for
want of sailors to man them.

Had this been done, Philip of Spain would never have been able to
threaten England with his "Invincible Armada." But the brave
Englishmen of those days had to deal with a treacherous queen. The
Hollanders who had engaged in a desperate struggle that they might
have done with lies, and serve God with honesty and sincerity, were
willing and eager to be annexed to England, and in union with her
would have formed so strong a power as to be able to resist any
Continental league against them.

But Elizabeth cared more for herself than for her country and her
cause, and thus