FOR THE SOUTH LAND 
33 
the south coast of a land in 55 0 S. These islands were 
undoubtedly part of the insular labyrinth of Tierra del 
Fuego, but they were shifted about on the map like 
pawns on a chess-board by the cartographers of the fol- 
lowing generation until “ Drake Land " figured as a 
respectable promontory of the great South Land itself. 
Although a pirate, Drake, in his own erratic way, was 
a pious man and carried a chaplain, the Rev. Francis 
Fletcher, who as the author of “ The World Encom- 
passed/' was also the chronicler of the voyage. Although 
his master once set him in irons on board, with the 
inscription on his arm “ frances fletcher ye falsest knave 
yt. liveth ” we may accept the chaplain's statement : “ at 
length wee fell with the uttermost part of land towards 
the South Pole, and had certainly discovered how farre 
the same doth reach Southward from the coast of Amer- 
ica aforenamed. The uttermost cape or hedland of all 
these Hands stands neere in 56 deg., without which there 
is no maine nor Hand to be seene to the Southwards, but 
that the Atlanticke Ocean and the South Sea, meete in a 
most large and free scope." 
Richard Hawkins, (whose identity as a prisoner of 
the Spanish is quaintly veiled in Don Ricardo Aquines, 
and in German translations Reichard von Aquin), also a 
famous buccaneer states his own view confirmed by a con- 
versation with Drake, as follows: 
“ If a man be furnished with woode and water and the 
winde good, he may keepe the mayne sea, and goe round 
about the straits to the southwards and it is the shorter 
way; for besides the experience which we made, that all 
the south part of the straites is but ilands, many times 
having the sea open, I remember that Sir Francis Drake 
told me, that having shott the straites, a storm first took 
