received with much hospitality by the natives, and the king made Drake a solemn tender of his kingdom. Sailing hence, they saw the Ladrones on the 13th of October. The admiral held on his course without delay, and on the 4th of November, fell in with the Moluccas. Having arrived at a little island south of Celebes, they staid 26 days, in order to repair the ships. Setting sail hence, they ran among a number of small islands, and the wind shifting about suddenly, drove them upon a rock, on the evening of the 9th of January, 1579, where they stuck fast, till four in the afternoon of the next day. In this extremity they lightened the vessel by taking out eight pieces of ordnance and three tons of cloves. On the 18th of June, they doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and on the 22d of July arrived at Sierra Leone, where they found a great number of elephants. They staid here two days, and holding on their course for Plymouth, arrived there on Monday, September 26, 1580; but according to their own reckoning, on Sunday the 25th, having gone round the world in two years, ten months, and a few days. The honor of knighthood was conferred on Drake, and a chair was made from his ship, which is still shown as a curiosity at Oxford.
HENRY HUDSON.
The distinguished English naval discoverer, Henry Hudson, sailed
from London in the year 1607, in a small vessel, for the purpose of discovering
a north-east passage to China and Japan, with a crew of only ten
men and a boy besides himself, and, proceeding beyond the 80th degree
of latitude, returned to England in September. In a second voyage, the
next year, he landed at Nova Zembla, but could proceed no farther eastward.
In 1609, he undertook a third voyage, under the patronage of the
Dutch East India Company. Being unsuccessful in his attempt to find a
north-east passage, he sailed for Davis' straits, but struck the continent of
America in 44 deg. N. lat., and holding a southerly course, discovered the
mouth of the river Hudson, which he ascended about fifty leagues in a boat.
His last voyage was undertaken in 1610. He sailed, April 17th, in a
barque named the Discovery, with a crew of twenty-three men, and came
within sight of Greenland, June 4th. Proceeding westward he reached,
in latitude 60 deg., the strait bearing his name. Through this he advanced
along the coast of Labrador, to which he gave the name of Nova
Brittannia, until it issued into the vast bay, which is also called after him.
He resolved to winter in the most southern part of it, and the crew drew
up the ship in a small creek, and endeavored to sustain the severity of that
dismal climate, in which attempt they endured severe privations. Hudson,
however, fitted up his shallop for farther discoveries; but, not being able
to establish any communication with the natives, or to revictual his ship,
with tears in his eyes he distributed his little remaining bread to his men,
and prepared to return. Having a dissatisfied and mutinous crew, he imprudently
uttered some threats of setting some of them on shore; upon
which a body of them entered his cabin at night, tied his arms behind him,
and put him in his own shallop, at the west end of the straits, with his son,
John Hudson, and seven of the most infirm of the crew. They were then
turned adrift, and were never more heard of. A small part of the crew,
after enduring incredible hardships, arrived at Plymouth, in September,
1611.
