80 BISCOV^ERIES OF 157^. 



to the Phillipines, which he did; and the chart now 

 or recently in use by the Manilla ships is said to 

 be that which was originally Urdaneta s. 



It may safely be asserted, that no mention of 

 the discovery attributed by Salvaterra to Urdaneta 

 is to be met with in any Spanish author. But as 

 the falsehood of the friar or the reporter could not 

 at that early period be known in England, and as 

 nothing in it appeared to be improbable, it served 

 to spur on a spirit of adventure, by holding out the 

 hope of certain success from perseverance. Ano- 

 ther account of the same kind was afterwards 

 received, which, though utterly false, produced the 

 same encouraging effects. One Thomas Cowles, 

 an Eno'lish seaman, of Badminster, in Somerset- 

 shire, made oath that, being some six years before 

 (1573) in Lisbon, he heard one Martin Chacque^ 

 a Portuo'ueze mariner, read out of a book which he, 

 Chacque, had published six years before that ; in 

 which it was stated, that twelve years before 

 (1556) he, the author, had set sail out of India for 

 Portuo-al, in a small vessel of the burden of about 

 eighty tons, accompanied by four large ships, from 

 which he was separated by a westerly gale of 

 wind ; that having sailed among a number of 

 islands he entered a gulph, which conducted him 

 into the Atlantic, in the S^"" of latitude, near New- 

 foundland, from whence he proceeded without see- 

 ing any more land till he fell in with the north- 

 west part of Ireland, and from thence to Lisbon, 



