DEATH OF SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT. 
SI 
riches. He now determined to return to England, but as his lit¬ 
tle frigate, as she was called, appeared wholly unfit to proceed 
on such a voyage, he was entreated not to venture in her, but to 
take his passage in the Golden Hinde. To these solicitations 
the gallant knight replied: “I will not forsake my little com¬ 
pany going homewards, with whom I have passed so many 
storms and perils/’ When the two vessels had passed the Azores, 
Sir Humphrey’s frigate, was observed to be nearly overwhelmed 
by a great sea; she recovered, however, the stroke of the waves, 
and immediatly afterwards, the admiral was observed by those in 
the Hinde, sitting abaft with a book in his hand and calling out^ 
“ Courage, my lads, we are as near heaven by sea, as by land.” 
The same night the little bark, and all within her were swal¬ 
lowed up in the sea, and never more heard of. 
Such was the unfortunate end of the brave Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 
who may be regarded as the father of the western colonization, and 
who was one of the chief ornaments of the most chivalrous age 
of English history. 
Whilst these events were taking place in the north, the Eng¬ 
lish were extending their discoveries in the West Indies, where 
the Spaniards regarded every rood of land as their own, although 
they had no population to occupy it, and which in many instances 
they had never seen, until attracted by the news that Europeans 
had settled in them, on which they went forth to burn, to destroy, 
and murder. 
They also sent their remonstrances to queen Elizabeth on the 
conduct of the English, but the high minded monarch replied, 
“ that the Spaniards had drawn these inconveniences upon them¬ 
selves, by their severe and unjust dealings in their American 
commerce; for she did not understand, why, either her subjects 
or those of any other European province should be debarred 
from traffic in the West Indies. That as she did not acknow¬ 
ledge the Spaniards to have any title, by the donation of the bishop 
of Rome, so she knew no right they had to any places, other than 
those they were in actual possession of; for that their having 
touched only here and there upon a coast, and given names to 
a few rivers and capes, were such insignificant things as could 
