JOHN DAVIS 223 



built a large boat and put a mast in her and sailed away 

 to death when the water was open went to Kod-lun- 

 arn (White Man's Island) and there found the house of 

 lime and stone as described, and traces of the diggings, 

 and many relics among which he made the collection 

 presented by him to the British Government. 



In the year 1583, when Sir Humphrey Gilbert, whose 

 Discourse gave so great a stimulus to Arctic discovery, 

 founded St. John's, Newfoundland the first English 

 colony in America a patent was granted by Queen 

 Elizabeth to his brother Adrian "of Sandridge in the 

 county of Devon," as one of the colleagues of the 

 Fellowship for the Discovery of the North -West 

 Passage. At this Sandridge on the east of the Dart, 

 bounded on three sides by the river, some two miles 

 above Dartmouth was the home of the three Gilberts 

 (John, Humphrey, and Adrian), whose mother by a 

 second marriage became the mother of Carew and 

 Walter Raleigh ; and here, about 1550, of a family 

 also owning property in the small peninsula, was born 

 John Davis, as we know him, or John Davys, as he 

 signed himself, who was probably a playmate, and 

 certainly a life-long friend, of these five. 



Davis was an accomplished seaman, the best of the 

 Elizabethan navigators, and a man of accurate observa- 

 tion, always on the alert, whose reputation does not 

 rest only on the work he did in the northern and other 

 seas, for he was the author of The Seaman's Secrets, 

 the most popular practical navigation treatise of its 

 time. Very early, perhaps from the first, he was one 

 of the moving spirits in this new north-west enterprise, 

 for on the 23rd of January, 1583, we find Dr. Dee- 



