“Neither do I,” agreed Elizabeth heartily, “and it would but ill become me to differ with a man who has just given me a New Albion. Where say you that my new domain lies?”
“On the western shores of North America,” answered Drake, “and perchance, your Majesty, this new domain may stretch into Asia itself, for the western land reaches much farther west than I had thought, and it may be that in the far north the New World touches the old.”
“Then I am perhaps queen of the Indies,” said Elizabeth with a smile. “Now go, my brave sailor, but see to it that you come soon to court again, for there is much more that I would know of this wicked journey of yours.”
So it was that these bold buccaneers went on their voyages, not so much for adventure or discovery as for the sake of gold. The easiest way to get gold was to take it from the Spanish settlements in America, but when Drake sailed, the Spaniards on the eastern coast of America were becoming wary. Too many of their treasure ships had been attacked and too many of their settlements robbed for them to live as carelessly as had been the case in the earlier days. Spanish ships on the Atlantic were manned with men who could fight, and Spanish settlements on the eastern coast of America were guarded and fortified.
On the Pacific shore matters were different. Spanish gold from the fabulously rich mines of Peru was carried leisurely up the coast in vessels manned chiefly by negro slaves. At Panama it was unloaded and taken across the isthmus. Then it was carefully guarded, and vessels well supplied with Spanish troops bore it across the ocean to the treasure vaults of Philip. It did not occur to the Spaniards that even an English corsair would venture to round Cape Horn, and when Drake appeared among the unprotected ships and the unfortified settlements, he found an easy prey. It was less dangerous for him to cross the Pacific and double the Cape of Good Hope than to return to England among the Spanish vessels on the Atlantic; and that is why Drake was the first Englishman to sail around the world.
These English buccaneers sailed under a sort of roving commission from the queen. They were to give her a share of their profits, but they knew well that if they could not extricate themselves from any trouble that they might fall into with Philip, she would make no effort to defend them, but would declare that they had had orders to do no harm to her “good friend, the king of Spain.” Still, the prizes of success were so enormous and the charm of adventure so enticing that there was no lack of bold leaders to rob the coffers of Spain, to fill the treasury of Elizabeth, and to prepare experienced seamen for the great struggle that awaited England when Philip “of the leaden foot” should at last arise and show his might.
CHAPTER XIII
THE NEW WORLD
To most of the sailors of Elizabeth’s time the chief inducement to make a voyage to the westward lay in the possibility of winning Spanish gold in one way or another, but a few sailed with quite a different object. A little more than a century before Drake’s famous voyage around the world, Columbus had crossed the Atlantic, hoping to find a shorter passage to India. In the days of Elizabeth it was well known that a continent blocked the way to Asia, but mariners had no idea that North America was nearly as broad as it has proved to be, and they were ever hoping to find a passage through it to the wonderful countries of spices and gems and perfumes.