Disagreement of Latitudes. 209 
Central America and Mexico from Chili to Guatulco, capturing 
ships, towns and great treasures of gold, silver and plate, spread- 
ing a reign of terror in that whole region, reached at last the 
port of Guatulco, a haven a short distance west of Tehuantepec. 
At Guatuleo* Drake, knowing that the whole*power of Spain 
was now aroused and on the qui vive in the South sea, and that 
the return route by the straits of Magellan was too dangerous 
and uncertain, both on account of difficult navigation and certain 
attack from Spanish fleets, boldly resolved to return to England 
by the Pacific ocean, the Moluccas and East Indies, and the cape 
of Good Hope, a longer but a safer route. Leaving Guatulco 
well loaded with plunder, Drake sailed northwestward instead 
of westward, his true course, some 500 leagues in longitude, and 
to June 3 1,400 leagues in all, “until we came into 42° north 
latitude,” + but Pretty says 43° of the pole arctic. 
Although Fletcher and Pretty differ somewhat in their account, 
both agree that the cold for them was intense, after their long 
cruise in the tropics. Pretty says, “ our men being pinched with 
the same, complained of the extremity thereof,” while Fletcher 
pithily says, “they seemed to be in the frozen zone.” 
On June 5 our militant chaplain says: ‘“‘ Wee were forced by 
contrary windes to runne in with the shoare, and so cast anchor 
in a bad bay.” Here the cold continuing and, as Fletcher calls 
them, “vile, thick and stinking fogges prevailing,” § they were 
unabfe to remain, but were forced to go no farther north. 
Curiously enough, at this point of his narrative Fletcher seems 
to have had his mind or his memory much affected, probably 
by the aforesaid “ fogges,” for in the next paragraph he gravely 
tells that this bad bay was in the height (latitude) of 48° north, 
not far from the entrance of Puget sound into the Pacific ocean. 
So if Fletcher is correct in his statement as to the latitudes 
gained, then from June 3 to June 5, 1579, Drake had sailed in 
three days 6° of latitude, or over 400 miles, or, taking Pretty’s 
estimate of 5°, some 350 miles; but when they concluded to leave 
this locality and return southward, they followed the coast, which 
he says was reasonably plain, yet the hills were covered with 
snow. 
* World Encompassed, by Fletcher. 
ft Op. cit. 
t Pretty’s narrative or journal. 
2 World Encompassed. 
