d invade the dominions of the
King of Spain, consisted of his own ship, of a hundred and twenty tons,
the size of the smallest class of our modern Channel schooners, two
barques of fifty and thirty tons each, a second ship as it was called,
the Elizabeth, of eighty tons, not larger than a common revenue cutter,
and a pinnace, hardly more than a boat, intended to be burnt if it
could not bear the seas. These vessels, with a hundred and sixty-four
men, composed the force. The object of the expedition was kept as far as
possible secret. On the fifteenth of November the expedition sailed from
Plymouth Sound. The vessels struck across the Atlantic and made the
coast of South America on the fifth of April in latitude thirty-three
degrees South.

The perils of the voyage were now about to commence. No Englishman had
as yet passed Magellan's Strait. Cape Horn was unknown. Tierra del Fuego
was supposed to be part of a solid continent which stretched unbroken to
the Antarctic pole. A single narrow channel was the only access to the
Pacific then believed to exist. There were no charts, no records of past
experiences. It was known that Magellan had gone through, but that was
all. It was the wildest and coldest season of the year, and the vessels
in which the attempt was to be made were mere cockle-shells. They were
taken on shore, overhauled and scoured, the rigging looked to, and the
sails new bent.

On the seventeenth of August, answering to the February of the northern
hemisphere, all was once more in order. Drake sailed from Port St.
Julian, and on the twentieth entered the Strait and felt his way between
the walls of mountain "in extreme cold with frost and cold continually."
To relieve the crews, who were tried by continual boat work and heaving
the lead in front of the ships, they were allowed occasional halts at
the islands, where they amused and provisioned themselves with killing
infinite seals and penguins. Everything which they saw, birds, beasts,
trees, climate, country, were strange, wild, and wonderful. After three
weeks' toil and anxiety, they had accomplished the passage and found
themselves in the open Pacific. But they found also that it was no
peaceful ocean into which they had entered, but the stormiest they had
ever encountered. Their vessels were now reduced to three; the pinnace
had been left behind at Port St. Julian, and there remained only the
Pelican, the Elizabeth, and the thirty-ton cutter. Instantly