36 TRANSACTIONS iSgg-'oo 



The next of the hardy English navigators whose explora- 

 tions are "title deeds" was John Davis. 



John Davis was born in Devon, that fruitful mother of great 

 seamen, whose impress upon the history of England is out of. all 

 proportion to the population of the county.* B}^ them New- 

 foundland was discovered. These adventurous old Devonshire 

 sailors year by A^ear left their little ports to reap the harvest of 

 the seas along the shores of the great island, which in their 

 homely way they called the '"new found land." By them the 

 ancient colony was largely peopled in the first instance. Prowse 

 in his history of Newfoundland says, "Many peculiarities of the 

 colony can be traced to our Devonshire forefathers." One of 

 these, germaine to our subject, is that all the lakes in New- 

 foundland are called ponds, the reason for which is that in the 

 south west of England there are no lakes, only ponds, a curious 

 transfer of a familiar name from one side of the ocean to another. 



From Devon came the friend and playmate of John Davis, 

 Sir Humphrey Gilbert, whose pathetic fate off our south eastern 

 Canadian coast is told in song and storj^ which have enlisted in 

 his behalf the sympathies of the school boys and school girls of 

 Canada from the time of the first English school in Halifax 150 

 years ago. 



From Devon also came Gilbert's half brother, Sir Walter 

 Raleigh, who planned the strategy which conquered the Spanish 

 Armada, and whose fame is commemorated by a tablet erected 

 in Westminster Abbey on which is inscribed, "Raleigh, the 

 founder of the English Empire in America." 



Another Devon man was Sir Francis Drake, the first of 

 Englishmen to circumnavigate the globe, the vice-admiral of the 

 English fleet when the Spanish Armada swept the British 

 Channel, intent on the invasion of the British Isles. 



Sir Redvers Buller, who planned the three marvellous springs 

 of the British Dion at his prey, on Dec. loth (Gatacre's) nth 

 (Methuen's) and 14th (Buller's) — which, when the sad clash of 



"Devonshire, the county of cream, has well been called the cream of 

 counties, from the illustrious men and historj^-makers it has produced, and it 

 is still as proliiic of sailors and soldiers as it was in the days of Drake and 

 Raleigh and the other west county paladins of the good Queen Bess. 



