Hawkins died, overcome by the reverses; and Drake, struck with a fever of mortification, sank beneath the fatal influences of the climate, and died on board his ship early in the following year. His remains were placed in a leaden casket and sunk off Puerto Cabello, and there was no failure of suspicions that he had been the victim of foul play. There are those in the English nation who indulge the hope that the casket may yet be recovered, and that the remains of the great English “Dragon” may yet rest beneath the pavement of Westminster Abbey.
CRITICAL ESSAY ON DRAKE’S BAY.
THE question where was the “convenient and fit harbor,” the “fair and good bay,” which Drake entered on the Pacific coast, and where he careened and repaired the “Pelican,” is still undecided, after much discussion by the Californian geographers, who have now their capital in the city of San Francisco,—on that matchless land-locked harbor which is entered by the narrow passage known as the “Golden Gate.” The authorities are not many, and are not quite in accord.
The narrative of Fletcher, which has been followed in the text, gives the latitude of this bay as 38° 30′ north. But the briefer narrative in Hakluyt[153] says: “We came within thirty-eight degrees towardes the line; in which height it pleased God to send us into a faire and good bay, with a good wind to enter the same.” Here is a difference of half a degree. But the text in Hakluyt is supported by a manuscript marginal note on what seems to be the original drawing of Dudley’s map, and which is preserved in Munich, where the language (Italian) is: “This map begins with the port of New Albion, in longitude 237° and latitude 38°, discovered by the Englishman Drake in 1579 or thereabout, as above,—a convenient place to water and to collect other refreshment.” The manuscript has a note, which the engraving has not, “Porto bonissimo.” But on the coast farther north, where the same author speaks of the cold, he says: “Drake returned to 38½ degrees, and the weather was temperate, and he called it New Albion.” The Arcano del Mare, in which these maps are printed, was not published till 1646. But Dudley, the author, was active in maritime affairs in England in all the last ten years of the sixteenth century. He was the son of Elizabeth’s Earl of Leicester; he was brother-in-law of Cavendish, administered on his estate, and must have seen his chart.[154] Hakluyt had wished to publish his narrative of Drake in his edition of 1589; but this account by Pretty was not regularly embodied by Hakluyt in his great work till 1600.[155] The World Encompassed was not printed until 1628, but is from Fletcher’s contemporary notes. Dudley himself prepared an expedition to the South Seas. He may be spoken of as a valuable contemporary authority. The English Government did not publish such discoveries. But Cavendish would have had Drake’s charts.
MODERN MAP.
This sketch will indicate the relative positions of the several bays.
Now the opening of the Golden Gate is in latitude 37° 46′: it exactly corresponds with “within 38° N.” of one account, but it lacks 44′ of the 38° 30′ of the other two. The discrepancy is not so important when we find that in 38° 30′ there is no harbor and no bay, good or bad. The voyager must come down the coast as far as 38° 15′ to find Bodega Bay, which has, accordingly, been assigned by some conjectures as Sir Francis’ resting-place. Just south of this, near the line of 38°, is an open roadstead which has some advocates in this discussion. Between this bay and the Golden Gate, the point of Los Reyes runs out southwest. East of this, and northwest of the Golden Gate, is another open roadstead, facing the south, which for many years, long before the discovery of Californian gold, had been known as Jack’s Bay, or Sir Francis Drake’s Bay. One of these four bays is chosen by one or another geographer as the fair and good harbor into which a special providence drove Drake by a favorable wind.
