1579.] PART OF NORTH-WEST COAST SEEN BY DRAKE. 75 



In the other narrative, called the World Encompassed,* it is declared 

 that the vessel was in latitude of 42 degrees on the third of June, 

 and that, on the fifth of the same month, she anchored near the land 

 of America, in a " bad bay," in latitude of forty-eight degrees, from 

 which being soon driven by the violence of the winds, she ran 

 along the coast, southward, to the harbor where she was refitted. 

 Thus the two accounts differ as to the vessels' position on the 

 fifth of June, on which day it is rendered probable, from both, that 

 the land was first seen. Hakluyt, who took great interest in all that 

 related to the west coast of North America, as well as to Drake, 

 gives the 43d parallel, in many places in his works, as the northern 

 limit of his countrymen's discoveries ; and the same opinion is 

 maintained by Camden, Purchas, De Laet, Ogilby, Heylin, Locke, 

 Dr. Johnson, and every other author who wrote on the subject 

 before the middle of the last century — except the two following : 

 The celebrated navigator John Davis, in his World's Hydrographi- 

 cal Discovery, published in 1595, asserts that, "after Sir Francis 

 Drake was entered into the South Sea, he coasted all the western 

 shores of America, until he came to the septentrional latitude of 

 48 degrees ; " this assertion, however, carries with it its own refu- 

 tation, as it is nowhere else pretended that Drake saw any part of 

 the west coast of America between the 17th degree of latitude and 

 the 38th. Sir William Monson, another great naval authority of 

 that age, declares, in his Tracts, first printed in 1712, that, "from 

 the 16th of April to the 15th of June, Drake sailed without seeing 

 land, and arrived in 48 degrees, thinking to find a passage into our 

 seas ; " but, unfortunately for Sir William's consistency, he main- 

 tains, in many other parts of his Tracts, that "Cape Mendocino 

 [near the 40th parallel] is the farthest land discovered," and " the 

 farthermost known land." In the Life of Sir Francis Drake, pub- 

 lished in 1750, in the Biographia Britannica, the opinion that he 



* " The World Encompassed, by Sir Francis Drake, collected out of the Notes of 

 Mr. Francis Fletcher, Preacher, in this Employment, and compared with divers 

 others' Notes that went in the same Voyage." According to Barrow, it was prepared 

 by a nephew of the navigator, shortly after his death ; it was, however, not published 

 until 1652. It may be found at length in Osborne's Collection of Voyages, vol. ii. 

 p. 434. It is a long and diffuse account, filled with dull and generally absurd specula- 

 tions, and containing, moreover, a number of statements which are positive and 

 evidently wilful falsehoods ; yet it contains scarcely a single fact not related in the 

 Famous Voyage, from which many sentences and paragraphs are taken verbatim, 

 while others convey the same meaning in different terms. The journal, or supposed 

 journal, of Fletcher remains in manuscript in the British Museum; and from it were 

 derived the false statements above mentioned, according to Barrow, who consulted it, 



