deep, and brought forth dry land: so he would now discover land to us, that we might not perish. And it came to pass, that the next day, about evening, we saw within a kenning before us, towards the north, as it were thick clouds, which did put us in some hope of land; knowing how that part of the South Sea was utterly unknown, and might have islands or continents, that hitherto were not come to light. Wherefore we bent our course thither, where we saw the appearance of land all that night; and in the dawning of the next day, we might plainly discern that it was a land, flat to our sight, and full of boscage, which made it shew the more dark. And after an hour and a half's sailing, we entered into a good haven, being the port of a fair city; not great indeed, but well built, and that gave a pleasant view from the sea: and we thinking every minute long till we were on land, came close to the shore, and offered to land. But straightways we saw divers of the people with bastons in their hands, as it were, forbidding us to land; yet without any cries or fierceness, but only as warning us off by signs that they made. Whereupon, being not a little discomforted, we were advising with ourselves what we should do. During which time there made forth to us a small boat, with about eight persons in it; whereof one of them had in his hand a tipstaff of a yellow cane, tipped at both ends with blue, who came aboard our ship, without any shew of distrust at all. And when he saw one of our number present himself somewhat afore the rest, he drew forth a little scroll of parchment, somewhat yellower than our parchment, and shining like the leaves of writing-tables, but otherwise soft and flexible, and delivered it to our foremost man. In which scroll were written in ancient Hebrew, and in ancient Greek, and in good Latin of the school, and in Spanish, these words: 'Land ye not, none of you, and provide to be gone from this coast within sixteen days, except you have farther time given you: meanwhile if you want fresh water, or victual, or help for your sick, or that your ship needeth repair, write down your wants, and you shall have that which belongeth to mercy.' Ultimately the voyagers were most kindly received in 'the Strangers' House,' hospitably entertained at the public expense, and their sick doctored, on condition only of their keeping within the bounds prescribed to them. When they naturally wished to know how their hosts had received Christianity, they were told a marvellous tale how about twenty years after the ascension of our Saviour,' out of a pillar of fire a cedar-wood ark came sailing shorewards in presence of all the inhabitants of the city of Renfusa, containing a letter from the apostle Bartholomew and a complete copy on parchment of the Old and New Testaments-including, Bacon notes, those books of the New Testament which were not at that time written; though he evidently thought most of the books were extant in A.D. 53 or thereabouts. Then or later they also became possessed of the otherwise wholly lost encyclopædic work which Solomon 'wrote of all plants from the cedar of Libanus to the moss that groweth out of the wall.' And they were miraculously empowered to read these sacred books as if they had been written in their own language. scarce think credible, rity is the ble temperance; ago, or somewhat more, blessing especially for remote voyagiction, and day. Do not think with youen in the ea te you shape the the penceX DR cribing teas, 7 ion. Prec and ax Tsee in how much it is increased with years I know it well; and yet now whether it was, that the ex saved the remnant of men from the men confidence to adventure upon it was, but such is the truth. especially the Tyrians, had great ng to Carthaginians their colony, which ind, Toward the east, the shipping of Egyp a lig was likewise great. China also, and of the that you call America, which have nues canoes, abounded then in tall ships. are in appeareth by faithful registers of thoser vie fifteen hundred strong ships, of great this there is with you sparing memo we have large knowledge thereof. irs, but 樂 increase remember Aghaa 'At that time this land was known ences the ships and vessels of all the natiof Ma And, as it cometh to pass, they hadat hath of other countries, that were no sail fortune them; as Persians, Chaldeans, Arabiaprises, nations of might and fame resorted h have some stirps and little tribes wi Parents And for our own ships, they went s well to your Straits, which you call cules, as to other parts in the Atlantic Seas; as to Peguin, which is the sa es a fastre " and Quinzy upon the Oriental Seand of ju borders of the East Tartary. [The to, the here for which neither Marco Polo nor as fortu is responsible. Pegu has no conned law; bu or Cambalu, i.e. Peking; nor that whe law or Kinsai, or Khing-sai, i.e. Hang-cho God Alm Peking nor Hang-chow is on the orideed it At the same time, and an age is the gr Brush habitants of the great Atlantis did the narration and description whic man with you, that the descendant there; and of the magnificent ter hill; and the manifold streams come to: rivers, which, as so many chainsely; as if g site and temple; and the seve whereby men did climb up to the a scala cæli, be all poetical and is true, that the said country of except where Peru, then called Coya, as that ly fabrics of Tyrambel, were mighty and phated palaces shipping, and riches: so might small cost. without ss handy-v when ages 'Of Bu Houses ar therefore s least within the space of ten y Dissimulation *** "sdom; for it heart to knova: great expeditions, they of Tyran to the Mediterranean Sea; an the South Sea upon this our is of these, which was into E Therefore it amongst you, as it seemeth, havho are the Egyptian priest whom he cite me rich sour thing there was, but whether it and faces ar that had the glory of the repul el -The remedy worse 7 nothing; but certain it is, there never ther ship, or man, from that voyage. re than the the other voyage of those of Coya upon us ortune, if they had not met with enemies of - ency. For the king of this island, by name devise man, and a great warrior, knowing well ts. The s vn strength, and that of his enemies, handled gr so, as he cut off their land-forces from their entoiled both their navy and their camp with power than theirs, both by sea and land; and d them to render themselves without striking and after they were at his mercy, contenting only with their oath, that they should no more the 'ms against him, dismissed them all in safety. upone divine revenge overtook not long after those h. Tenterprises. For within less than the space of great indred years, the great Atlantis was utterly lost hich estroyed; not by a great earthquake, as your man of Egy for that whole tract is little subject to earthquakes, , and a particular deluge or inundation: those countries have no at this day, far greater rivers and far higher ships, ins, to pour down waters, than any part of the of thos rld. But it is true that the same inundation was of greatẹp; not past forty foot, in most places, from the ees memor nown e nati y hat sail so that although it destroyed man and beast f. lly, yet some few wild inhabitants of the wood d. Birds also were saved, by flying to the high nd woods. For as for men, although they had gs in many places higher than the depth of the yet that inundation, though it were shallow, long continuance; whereby they of the vale, that ot drowned, perished for want of food, and other necessary. So as marvel you not at the thin tion of America, nor at the rudeness and ignorance people; for you must account your inhabitants of ntica as a young people; younger a thousand years, rabia ed h ent call The least, than the rest of the world; for that there much time between the universal flood and their lar inundation. For the poor remnant of human hich remained in their mountains, peopled the again slowly, by little and little and being and savage people, not like Noah and his sons, vas the chief family of the earth, they were not leave letters, arts, and civility to their posterity; ving likewise in their mountainous habitations ed, in respect of the extreme cold of those regions, e themselves with the skins of tigers, bears, and iry goats, that they have in those parts: when ey came down into the valley, and found the ole heats which are there, and knew no means er apparel, they were forced to begin the custom naked, which continueth at this day.' most characteristic institution of the island apmon's House, or the College of the Six Works, and Bacon's chief interest in the affair was in the description of this 'model lege for the interpreting of nature and the ing of great and marvellous works for the Tof men.' Amongst the 'riches of Solomon's the first to be named are low-level and el observatories and experimental stations. ow region' is in caves or shafts sunk six 1 fathoms, some of them under great hills ountains. The high-level ones are thus ed: 'We have high towers; the highest about half a mile in height; and some of them likewise set upon high mountains; so that the vantage of the hill with the tower, is in the highest of them three miles at least. And these places we call the upper region: accounting the air between the high places and the low, as a middle region. We use these towers, according to their several heights and situations, for insolation, refrigeration, conservation, and for the view of divers meteors; as winds, rain, snow, hail, and some of the fiery meteors also. And upon them, in some places, are dwellings of hermits, whom we visit sometimes, and instruct what to observe.' Solomon's House gave no hesitating approval to systematic vivisection : 'We have also parks and inclosures of all sorts of beasts and birds, which we use not only for view or rareness, but likewise for dissections and trials; that thereby we may take light what may be wrought upon the body of man. Wherein we find many strange effects; as continuing life in them, though divers parts, which you account vital, be perished, and taken forth; resuscitating of some that seem dead in appearance, and the like. We try also all poisons and other medicines upon them, as well of chirurgery as physic. By art likewise, we make them greater or taller than their kind is; and contrariwise dwarf them, and stay their growth: we make them more fruitful and bearing than their kind is; and contrariwise barren, and not generative.' ... How far Bacon was from the truth as it is in modern science may be seen from other departments of the college, which abet spontaneous generation: 'We have also means to make divers plants rise by mixtures of earths without seeds; and likewise to make divers new plants differing from the vulgar; and to make one tree or plant turn into another. . . . We make a number of kinds of serpents, worms, flies, fishes of putrefaction; whereof some are advanced in effect to be perfect creatures like beasts or birds, and have sexes and do propagate.' The New Atlantis ends abruptly, after describing at some length several of the various departments of the college. Bacon's adhesion to various anti-scientific maxims is also conspicuous in his Sylva Sylvarum or Natural History, where there is a chapter 'Of the insecta bred of putrefaction,' for example. Here too he prescribes experiments for the 'version and transmutation of air into water,' and others for the making of gold from silver or copper (quicksilver is useless for the purpose). 'The world hath been much abused by the opinion of making gold: the work itself I judge to be possible; but the means hitherto propounded to effect it are in the practice full of error and imposture, and in the theory full of unsound imagination.' Confidence in the importance of his work is expressed in the following characteristic sentences (quoted from the translation of the Novum Organum prepared for Stebbing's edition): I have made a beginning of the work-a beginning, as I hope, not unimportant :-the fortune of the human race will give the issue ;-such an issue, it may be, as in the present condition of things and men's minds cannot easily be conceived or imagined. For the matter in hand is no mere felicity of speculation, but the real business and fortunes of the human race, and all power of operation. For man is but the servant and interpreter of nature what he does and what he knows is only what he has observed of nature's order in fact or in thought; beyond this he knows nothing and can do nothing. For the chain of causes cannot by any force be loosed or broken, nor can nature be commanded except by being obeyed. And so those twin objects, human Knowledge and human Power, do really meet in one; and it is from ignorance of causes that operation fails. And all depends on keeping the eye steadily fixed upon the facts of nature and so receiving their images simply as they are. For God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world; rather may he graciously grant to us to write an apocalypse or true vision of the footsteps of the Creator imprinted on his creatures. Bacon's verses have a somewhat exceptional interest in view of the Bacon-Shakespeare propaganda. Two poems have often been printed as his on very doubtful authority. That beginning— The man of life upright Whose guiltless heart is free Or thought of vanity, is now known to be Campion's. The other, included by Mr Palgrave in the Golden Treasury, is a translation or paraphrase of a Greek epigram of uncertain authorship. The paraphrase was ascribed to Bacon as early as 1629, three years after his death, and was accepted by Spedding as his. It is suggestive and metrical, and well worthy of a metaphysical poet,' but is hardly a triumphant poetical achievement, as may be seen from the first verse: The world's a bubble and the life of man Less than a span; In his conception wretched, from the womb Curst from the cradle and brought up to years Who then to frail mortality shall trust But limns the water or but writes in dust. But Bacon certainly executed a metrical Translation of Certain Psalms, seven in number; for he published them in his own name (1624), with a grateful dedication to his friend George Herbert. They are the only verses we can confidently say were written by the Lord Chancellor, and they give no very high idea of what he could do when he assumed his singing robes. The First Psalm is versified in this fashion : Who never gave to wicked reed A yielding and attentive ear; Who never sinners' paths did tread, Nor sat him down in scorner's chair, On law of God to meditate; And therein spendeth day and night : counsel The Hundred and Forty-ninth is even less worthy of the author of such majestic prose, and as poetry is clearly below the ordinary level of Sternhold and Hopkins. The first verse runs : O sing a new song to our God above, Avoid prophane ones, 'tis for holy quire : Let Israel sing songs of holy love To him that made them, with their hearts on fire: Carols and anthems to their heav'nly King. Attempts have sometimes been made to extend portentously Bacon's literary bequest to posterity. From Delia Bacon's time (1857) to the present day the voice of the paradoxist has from time to time been heard proclaiming to an incredulous world the faith that Bacon is the author or joint-author of some or most or all of Shakespeare's plays. Because Shakespeare was not a really great actor and was regardless of his fame, because he did not publish his own plays, because the player was illiterate while the plays were learned, because the plays must have been written by the greatest man of that or all time, because Bacon was great enough to have written them, because of coincidences between Bacon's thought and the playwright's, because of cryptograms worked into the texture of the plays (Donnelly), because the more important of the plays fit exactly into gaps left by Bacon in the system of his prose works (Bormann)—for these and other reasons we are asked to believe this eccentric theory. Delia Bacon wrote the Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded in 1857; Wyman published in 1884 (at Chicago) a Bibliography of the Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy, containing two hundred and fiftyfive entries (seventy-three for the Bacon view); Donnelly's Great Cryptogram (1888) tried to prove that Bacon's cryptogram was found throughout Shakespeare. The same argument may of course be extended-and has been extended-to claim what is best in Marlowe, Burton, and even Montaigne for Bacon! -surely with the effect of a reductio ad absurdum. C. Stopes issued a pamphlet on the Shakespeare-Bacon Question in 1888, and another in 1889. Two notable German contributions were J. Schipper, Zur Kritik der Shakespeare-Bacon Frage (against, Vienna, 1889), and Edwin Bormann, Das Shakespeare Geheimniss (1894; trans. The Shakespeare Secret, 1896). The first Life of Bacon was by his learned chaplain,' William Rawley (c. 1588-1667); it appeared in 1657, and went into a second edition in 1661. The standard edition of Bacon's works is that of Spedding, Ellis, and Heath (14 vols. 1857-74), seven volumes of which are occupied by the apologetic Life and Letters by Mr Spedding. See also Macaulay's brilliant attack, the article in the Dictionary of National Biography by Dr S. R. Gardiner and Dr Fowler, Dean Church's monograph in the 'Men of Letters' series (1884), and the short Life by Dr Abbott (1885), with the Life and Philosophy by Professor Nichol (1890); and for the philosophy, Kuno Fischer's monograph (trans. 1857) and Fowler's edition of the Novum Organum (1878). Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), successively bishop of Chichester, Ely, and Winchester, and a privy-councillor, had the singular good fortune to enjoy the favour of three sovereigns, and his death was mourned by the youthful muse of Milton. Born at Barking, and bred at Merchant Taylors' and Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, he was at thirty-four Master of the Hall and prebendary of St Paul's, and was reputed next to Ussher the most learned divine of the day. In patristic learning he stood alone. By his defence of James against Bellarmine James having written an apology for the new oath of allegiance-he secured the special favour of the king. He attended the Hampton Court Conference, and went with the king to Scotland in 1617 to try to persuade the Scots that episcopacy was better than presbytery. Andrewes was a strong High Churchman, and, like his protégé and friend Laud, attached importance to a high ritual: the Puritan Prynne describes with open disgust the 'Popish furniture' of his private chapels both at Ely and at Winchester. Yet personally he was, unlike Laud, tolerant towards those who thought differently, and was revered for his devoutness by many strict Puritans. He was master of fifteen languages, was of sufficient depth in philosophy to be consulted by Bacon, and was almost equally noted for his charity, his munificence, and his wit. Dr Neale, Bishop of Durham, and Andrewes were standing behind the king's chair at dinner, when James suddenly turned to them and said, 'My lords, cannot I take my subjects' money when I want it, without all this formality in Parliament?' Neale replied, 'God forbid, sir, but you should; you are the breath of our nostrils.' The king then addressed Andrewes: 'Well, my lord, and what say you?' 'Sir,' replied Andrewes, 'I have no skill to judge of parliamentary cases.' The king answered, 'No puts-off, my lord; answer me presently.' 'Then, sir,' said he, 'I think it lawful for you to take my brother Neale's money, for he offers it.' He was accounted the greatest preacher of his time, the star of preachers,' 'an angel in the pulpit;' but to a taste moulded on the later and more flowing style of Jeremy Taylor and Tillotson, the power and impressiveness of his sermons and their wealth of matter and illustration are obscured by the abruptness of the transitions, the tags of Latin and Greek, and the extraordinary verbal conceits or puns-If it be not Immanu-el it will be Immanu-hell;' 'Immanu-el and Immanuall. The following extract is a fair specimen : Of Angels and Men. Of the parties compared; angels and men, these two we must first compare, that we may the more clearely see the greatnesse of the grace and benefit, this day vouchsafed us. No long processe will need to lay before you how farre inferiour our nature is to that of the angels: it is a comparison without comparison. It is too apparant, if we be laid together or weighed together, we shall be found minus habentes, farre too light. They are in expresse termes said (both in the Old and in the New Testament) to excell us in power: and as in power, so in all the rest. This one thing may suffice to shew the oddes that our nature; that we, when we are at our very highest perfection, it is even thus expressed that we come neare, or are therein like to, or as an angell. Perfect beautie, in Saint Stephen: they saw his face, as the face of an angell. Perfect wisdome in David: my lord the king is wise, as an angel of God. Perfect eloquence in Saint Paul: though I spake with the tongues of men, nay of angels. All our excellencie, our highest and most perfect estate, is but to be as they : therefore, they above us farre. : But to come nearer: What are angels? Surely they are spirits, glorious spirits, heavenly spirits, immortal spirits. For their nature or substance, spirits; for their quality or property, glorious; for their place or abode, heavenly; for their durance or continuance, immortall. And what is the seed of Abraham, but as Abraham himselfe is? And what is Abraham? Let him answer himselfe I am dust and ashes. What is the seed of Abraham? Let one answer in the persons of all the rest; dicens putredini, &c, saying to rottennesse, thou art my mother, and to the wormes, yee are my brethren. 1. They are spirits; now what are we, what is the seed of Abraham? Flesh. And what is the harvest very of this seed of flesh? What but corruption, and rottenness, and worms. There is the substance of our bodies. 2. They glorious spirits; we vile bodies (beare with it, it is the Holy Ghost's owne terme, Who shall change our vile bodies). And not only base and vile, but filthy and uncleane: ex immundo conceptum semine, conceived of unclean seed: there is the metall. And the mould is no better, the wombe wherein we were conceived, vile, base, filthy, and uncleane. There is our qualitie. 3. They heavenly spirits, angels of heaven: that is, their place of abode is in heaven above, ours is here below in the dust; inter pulices, et culices, tineas, araneas, et vermes; our place is here among fleas and flies, moths, and spiders, and crawling wormes. There is our place of dwelling. 4. They are immortal spirits; that is their durance. Our time is proclaimed in the prophet: Flesh, all flesh is grasse, and the glory of it as the floure of the field (from April to June). The sithe commeth; nay, the wind but bloweth, and we are gone, withering sooner than the grasse, which is short: nay, fading sooner than the floure of the grasse, which is much shorter : nay, saith Job, rubbed in peeces more easily than any moth. This we are to them if you lay us together; and if you weigh us upon the ballance, we are altogether lighter than vanity itself: there is our weight. And if you value us, man is but a thing of nought there is our worth. Hoc est omnis homo; this is Abraham, and this is Abraham's seed and who would stand to compare these with angels? Verily, there is no comparison; they are, incomparably, farre better than the best of us. Now then this is the rule of reason, the guide of all choice, evermore to take the better and leave the worse. Thus would man doe; hæc est lex hominis. Here then commeth the matter of admiration: notwithstanding these things stand thus, betweene the angels and Abraham's seed: (they, spirits, glorious, heavenly, immortall;) yet tooke He not them; yet, in no wise, tooke He them; but the seed of Abraham. The seed of Abraham, with their bodies, vile bodies, earthly bodies of clay, bodies of mortalitie, corruption, and death: these Hee tooke, these Hee tooke for all that. Angels, and not men; so, in reason, it should be: men, and not angels; so it is: and, that granted to us, that denied to them. Granted to us, so base; that denied them, so glorious. Denied, and strongly denied; Où ovdéπw; not, not in any wise, not at any hand, to them. They, every way, in every thing else, above, and before us; in this, beneath and behinde us. And we (unworthy, wretched men that we are,) above and before the angels, the Cherubim, the Seraphim, and all the principalities, and thrones, in this dignitie. This being beyond the rules and reach of all reason, is surely matter of astonishment: Toûro, &c. (saith Saint Chrysostome,) this, it casteth me into an extasie, and maketh me to imagine, of our nature, some great matter, I cannot well expresse what. Thus it is: it is the Lord, let Him doe what seemeth good in His owne eyes. In his lifetime Andrewes published nothing but the Latin con. troversial works in defence of the king's views. In 1628 ninety-six sermons were published from his MSS. by King Charles's command, Laud being one of the editors. Even more memorable were the Manual of Private Devotions, Manual of Directions for the Sick, and Prayer for the Holy Communion, translated by Drake use. (1648) from Andrewes's Greek and Latin original. The Devotions is the most famous, though meant by Andrewes solely for his own The first part of it is in Greek, the second in Latin; and in whole or in part has been repeatedly translated (as by Stanhope and Horne in the eighteenth century, and since by Neale, Cardinal Newman, Venables, and Whyte), and has been found of great profit by all schools of Christians. Cardinal Newman's translation of the first part appeared in the Tracts for the Times. See the Lives of Andrewes by A. T. Russell (1863) and R. L. Ottley (1894), and Dr Alexander Whyte's edition of the Devotions (1900). John Davis (1550?-1605), of Sandridge, near Dartmouth, always spelt his name Davys, and must not be confounded with another navigator, later and less interesting, John Davis of Limehouse (d. 1622). Davys of Sandridge was one of the most distinguished among the intrepid navigators of Queen Elizabeth's reign whose adventures are given by Hakluyt. In 1585 and the two following years he made three voyages to the Arctic Seas in search of a north-west passage to China, and on his third voyage, in a bark of twenty tons, discovered the strait to which his name (in the spelling Davis) has ever since been applied. In 1595 he himself published a small and now exceedingly rare volume, entitled The Worldes Hydrographical Discription, 'wherein,' as we are told in the title-page, 'is proved not onely by aucthoritie of writers, but also by late experience of travellers, and reasons of substantial probabilitie, that the worlde in all his zones, clymats, and places, is habitable and inhabited, and the seas likewise universally navigable, without any naturall anoyance to hinder the same; whereby appeares that from England there is a short and speedie passage into the South Seas to China, Molucca, Phillipina, and India, by northerly navigation, to the renowne, honour, and benefit of her majesties state and communalty.' In corroboration of these positions he gives a short narrative of his voyages, which, notwithstanding their unsuccess, seem to him to show that America is an island, and that a north-west passage exists. Davis next made two ill-fated voyages to the South Seas, and as pilot of a Dutch vessel bound to the East Indies. In his last voyage as pilot of an English ship of 240 tons he was killed in a desperate encounter with Japanese pirates. Besides his chief work, he wrote a very successful treatise on navigation, The Seaman's Secrets. Both were edited in 1878 for the Hakluyt Society by Captain A. H. Markham. In Search of the North-west Passage. In my first voyage not experienced of the nature of those climates, and having no direction either by Chart, Globe, or other certaine relation in what altitude that passage was to be searched, I shaped a Northerly course, and so sought the same towards the South, and in that my Northerly course I fell upon the shore which in ancient time was called Groenland, five hundred leagues distant from the Durseys, West north west Northerly, the land being very high and full of mightie mountaines all covered with snowe, no viewe of wood, grasse, or earth to be seene, and the shore two leagues off into the sea so full of yce as that no shipping cold by any meanes come neere the same. The lothsome vewe of the shore, and irksome noyse of the yce was such that it bred strange conceites among us, so that we supposed the place to be wast and voyd of any sensible or vegitable creatures, whereupon I called the same Desolation; so coasting this shore towardes the South in the latitude of sixtie degrees, I found it to trend towardes the west. I still followed the leading therof in the same height, and after fiftie or sixtie leagues it fayled and lay directly north, which I still followed, and in thirtie leagues sayling upon the West side of this coast by me named Desolation, we were past all the yce and found many greene and pleasant Isles bordering upon the shore, but the mountaines of the maine were still covered with great quantities of snowe. I brought my shippe among those Isles, and there mored to refreshe our selves in our wearie travell, in the latitude of sixtie foure degrees or there about. The people of the countrey having espyed our shippes came downe unto us in their Canoas, holding up their right hand to the Sunne and crying Yliaout, would strike their breasts; we doing the like, the people came aboard our shippes. men of good stature, unbearded, small eyed and of tractable conditions; by whome, as signes would permit, we understoode that towardes the North and West there was a great sea, and using the people with kindenese in giving them nayles and knives which of all things they most desired, we departed, and finding the sea free from yce, supposing our selves to be past al daunger, we shaped our course West northwest, thinking thereby to passe for China, but in the latitude of sixtie sixe degrees, wee fell with an other shore, and there founde an other passage of 20 leagues broad directly West into the same, which we supposed to bee our hoped straight. We entered into the same thirtie or fortie leagues, finding it neither to wyden nor straighten; then, considering that the yeere was spent, for this was in the fine of August, and not knowing the length of this straight and dangers thereof, we tooke it our best course to returne with notice of our good successe for this small time of search. And so retourning in a sharpe fret of Westerly windes. the 29 of September we arrived at Dartmouth. And acquainting master Secretary with the rest of the honorable and worshipfull adventurers of all our proceedings, I was appointed againe the seconde yeere to search the bottome of this straight, because by all likelihood it was the place and passage by us laboured for. In this second attempt the marchants of Exeter and other places of the West became adventurers in the action, so that, being sufficiently furnished for sixe moneths, and having direction to search these straights until we found the same to fall into an other sea upon the West side of this part of America, we should againe returne, for then it was not to be doubted but shipping with trade might safely bee conveied to China and the parts of Asia. We departed from Dartmouth, and arriving unto the south part of the coast of Desolation, coasted the same upon his west shore to the latitude of sixetie sixe degrees, and there ancored among the Isles bordering upon the same, where wee refreshed our selves. The people of this place came likewise unto us, by whom I understood through their signes that towardes the North the sea was large. At this place the chiefe ship whereupon I trusted, called the Mermayd of Dartmouth, found many occasions of discontentment, and being unwilling to proceed shee there forsook me. Then considering how I had given my faith and most constant promise to my worshipfuil |