Before long Gilbert wrote a pamphlet, entitled "A Discourse to Prove a
Passage by the Northwest to Cathaia and the East Indies," which was
shown by Gascoigne, a friend of Gilbert, to the celebrated mariner
Martin Frobisher, and stimulated him to his glorious voyages to the
northeast coast of North America.[25] Before Frobisher's departure on
his first voyage Queen Elizabeth sent for him and commended him for
his enterprise, and when he sailed, July 1, 1576, she waved her hand
to him from her palace window.[26] He explored Frobisher's Strait and
took possession of the land called Meta Incognita in the name of the
queen. He brought back with him a black stone, which a gold-finder in
London pronounced rich in gold, and the vain hope of a gold-mine
inspired two other voyages (1577, 1578). On his third voyage Frobisher
entered the strait known as Hudson Strait, but the ore with which he
loaded his ships proved of little value. John Davis, like Frobisher,
made three voyages in three successive years (1585, 1586, 1587), and
the chief result of his labors was the discovery of the great strait
which bears his name.[27]

Meanwhile, the idea of building up another English nation across the
seas had taken a firm hold on Gilbert, and among those who communed
with him were his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh, his brothers Adrian
and John Gilbert, besides Richard Hakluyt, Sir Philip Sydney, Sir
Richard Grenville, Sir George Peckham, and Secretary of State Sir
Francis Walsingham. The ill success of Frobisher had no influence upon
their purpose; but four years elapsed after Gilbert's petition to the
crown in 1574 before he obtained his patent. How these years preyed
upon the noble enthusiasm of Gilbert we may understand from a letter
commonly attributed to him, which was handed to the queen in November,
1577: "I will do it if you will allow me; only you must resolve and
not delay or dally--the wings of man's life are plumed with the