tons! The aggregate of the crews of the three ships was only
thirty-five, men and boys. Think of the daring of these early
navigators in attempting to pass by the North Pole to Cathay
through snow, and storm, and ice, in such miserable little
cockboats! The pinnace was lost; the Michael, under Owen
Griffith, a Welsh-man, deserted; and Martin Frobisher in the
Gabriel went alone into the north-western sea!

He entered the great bay, since called Hudson's Bay, by
Frobisher's Strait. He returned to England without making the
discovery of the Passage, which long remained the problem of
arctic voyagers. Yet ten years later, in 1577, he made another
voyage, and though he made his second attempt with one of Queen
Elizabeth's own ships, and two barks, with 140 persons in all, he
was as unsuccessful as before. He brought home some supposed
gold ore; and on the strength of the stones containing gold, a
third expedition went out in the following year. After losing
one of the ships, consuming the provisions, and suffering greatly
from ice and storms, the fleet returned home one by one. The
supposed gold ore proved to be only glittering sand.

While Frobisher was seeking El-Dorado in the North, Francis Drake
was finding it in the South. He was a sailor, every inch of him.

"Pains, with patience in his youth," says Fuller, "knit the
joints of his soul, and made them more solid and compact." At an
early age, when carrying on a coasting trade, his imagination was
inflamed by the exploits of his protector Hawkins in the New
World, and he joined him in his last unfortunate adventure on the
Spanish Main. He was not, however, discouraged by his first