192 ENGLAND'S ATTEMPTS TO KEACH INDIA what she feared to undertake. The Spanish monopoly of the Magellan route had been challenged during the diplomatic wrangle arising out of Drake's voyage round the world in 1577 - 1580. In July, 1586, Thomas Caven- dish set forth on the same course with three small ships of 140, 60, and 40 tons respectively, with crews aggre- gating 123 men. Philip II had attempted to forestall such irruptions into the Pacific by a fortified settlement GREENWICH IN 1662. commanding the Straits of Magellan. But Cavendish found the miserable colonists dead or fleeing from the place, which he contemptuously named the Town of Famine. Pillaging, prize-taking, and burning to the water's edge, he raided up the Pacific coast of Spanish America, buccaneered through the Spanish and Portu- guese islands of the Indian Ocean, and finally returned to England by the Cape of Good Hope with one sur- viving ship, in September, 1588, to be sung in ballads and flattered by the court. Two months before his arrival Spain had struck her long suspended blow. In the summer of 1588 the
