18 THE ANTARCTIC. 



continent with great precision, adding deep indentations as 

 gulfs as well as outlying islands and ranges of cliffs. Here, 

 too, is to be found what may again be merely a coinci- 

 dence, a projecting coast in almost exactly the latitude 

 and longitude of South Georgia, bounded by a deeply 

 indented bay on the west, the Golfo de San Sebastiano. 



The method of representing Tierra del Fuego as 

 a peninsula of the southern continent is all the more 

 surprising since from an early date it had been conjec- 

 tured that it was an island. Four years after the return 

 of the only ship saved from the fleet of the first great 

 circumnavigator, Magellan, the second Spanish expedition, 

 under the command of Garcia Jofre de Loayasa, passed 

 through the Straits of Magellan into the Pacific Ocean 

 in 1526. On entering the straits one of the vessels, the 

 San Lesmes, commanded by Francisco de Hoces, was 

 separated and driven south in a storm. It thus reached 

 the Le Maire Straits, re-discovered ninety years later, 

 separating Tierra del Fuego from Staten Island. 1 Al- 

 though the explorers concluded that they had reached 

 the extremity of the continent, they nevertheless made 

 their way back without following up their discovery. 

 Thus, this important discovery was for the time disre- 

 garded, and rendered no service either to navigation 

 or to cartography. 



A similar fate or worse befell Francis Drake, the 

 first discoverer of Cape Horn, 2 and therefore of the 

 southern extremity of the great western double continent. 

 Instead of erasing from the map the southern continent 

 presumably extending to the Straits of Magellan, the 

 distorted account of Drake's voyage tended to confirm 

 the error. There is a good account of Drake's voyage 

 extant from the pen of his ship's chaplain, Fletcher. 

 From the first simple statements made by him it is 



1 More accurately Staaten Island. 



2 iMore accurately Cape Hoorn. 



