20 THE ANTARCTIC. 



geographical miles. On this calculation there was 

 therefore a difference of 13^° in the latitude, so that De 

 Bry actually conveyed Drake to the Antarctic circle. 

 To make the high latitude vivid to his readers, he inter- 

 polates a statement which is entirely a fabrication, and 

 says that Drake observed that the night was of only two 

 hours' duration, so that at the time of the December 

 solstice the sun would remain above the horizon the 

 whole twenty-four hours. This inference is manifestly 

 based on the mistaken calculation of the latitude. Later 

 translations and adaptations of De Bry's work only made 

 matters worse, since they represented Drake as getting 

 the information as to the length of the day from the 

 natives, so that inhabitants were introduced into the 

 countries in those high latitudes. 



Such suggestions found a ready welcome among 

 theorising cartographers, and the land discovered by 

 Drake was forthwith removed to latitude 66° to 67 S. as 

 part of the coast of the great southern continent, regard- 

 less of the objections raised by experienced mariners like 

 Hawkins, or critical geographers like Oliver. Hawkins 

 had been told by Drake that the passage round the 

 southern extremity of the land was shorter than through 

 the Straits of Magellan, and this was verified in 1580 by 

 a Spanish vessel belonging to Sarmiento's squadron. 

 Strangely enough, Mercator in his map of the world 

 had in 1569 entered a deep bay in the latitude given 

 above, placing it on the coast of his imaginary continent, 

 to which he apparently gave increased precision by the 

 addition of outlying cliffs and islands. 



Scarcely twenty years later the champions of the 

 connection between Tierra del Fuego and the southern 

 continent seemed justified in their contention that Drake 

 had discovered land in a high southern latitude. A vessel 

 that had come through the Straits of Magellan was in the 

 same way driven south and found land. In the year 



