1834.] 
FALKLAND ISLANDS/ 
499 
completed, he was killed at the Ladrones, in fifteen hundred and 
twenty-on.e. In fifteen hundred and twenty-seven, Groaca de 
Loaisa, a knight of Malta, in the service of Spain, passed the 
strait, but his squadron of seven ships was lost, and he, with all 
his men, perished. Sebastian Cabot, Amerigo Vespucci, and 
Simon de Alcazara, made abortive attempts to pursue the same 
route. Cabot was the first person who explored the Rio de la 
Plata. " These repeated failures disheartened the Spaniards, and 
they gave over all attempts at discovery for many years." 
Sir Francis Drake, the great English circumnavigator, passed 
the Strait of Magellan in fifteen hundred and seventy-eight, and 
was driven by storms beyond fifty-seven degrees of south latitude, 
" where (says the writer of his voyage) we beheld the extremity 
of the American coast, and the confluence of the Atlantic and 
Southern Oceans." Mr. Baylies is correct in supposing that 
Drake discovered Cape Horn, and the western and southwestern 
coast of Terra del Fuego. 
So little was known of the southeastern coast of Terra del 
Fuego, as late as seventeen hundred and seventy-four, that Cooke, 
when actually in sight of Cape Horn, was unable to decide 
whether it was a detached island, or a part of the great island of 
Terra del Fuego. He laid down with much accuracy the head- 
lands, bays, and harbours of the southeastern coast of the latter 
island. 
The discovery of Cape Horn has generally been ascribed 
to Jacob Le Maire, a Dutchman in the service of the States of 
Holland, who was the first who doubled that terminus of South 
America, in sixteen hundred and sixteen. He called it Cape 
Hoorn, from a village in Holland. To the strait between Terra 
del Fuego and Staten-land Le Maire has attached his own name. 
Staten-land was so called in honour of the States of Holland. 
It is supposed that Davies, an Enghshman, and a companion of 
Cavendish in his voyage to the South Seas in fifteen hundred 
and ninety-two, was the first person who saw the Falkland 
Islands. i 
In fifteen hundred and ninety-four, Sir Richard Hawkins dis- 
covered these islands, and called them, in honour of his queen 
and himself, Hawkins' Maiden-land. 
In fifteen hundred and ninety-eight, they were seen by a Dutch 
I i 2 
