In the year 1552 Walter Ralegh was born. He was the second son of his father's third wife, and so the universal accident of birth seems in his case to be intensified. It was the sixth year of Edward VI.'s reign, and an astrologer has noted that year as "a year remarkable in our chronicles, first, for that strange shoal of the largest sea-fishes which, quitting their native waters for fresh and untasted streams, wandered up the Thames so high, till the river no longer retained any brackishness; and, secondly, for that it is thought to have been somewhat stained in our annals with the blood of the noble Seymer, Duke of Somerset--events surprisingly analogous both to the life of this adventurous voyager, Sir Walter Ralegh, whose delight was in the hazardous discovery of unfrequented coasts, and also to his unfortunate death." It is not possible to determine exactly the effect of these largest "sea fishes" on his after-life; their coming may have been mere coincidence, or it may have been that the same element of an unknown power that sent the fishes hurrying to untasted streams, made Ralegh restless as the fish. The point lends itself to straining by its nature, though it is staidly mentioned by the staid biographer who has been quoted. The dominating influence of his life was not the date of his birth, but his birthplace in the quiet of the country, and yet within the easiest reach of the fabulous outside world. That influence cannot be exaggerated. Old sailors, who, as young men, had sailed with Jaques Carthier, of St. Malo, must have stirred the boy's mind with the stories of their adventures up the river of Canada to Saguenay, where there was gold and silver and red copper; how they visited the town of Hochelaga, their captain very gorgeously attired; and how, when their guides had led them to the midst of the town, they were saluted by the women first and then by the men; and a comedy was rehearsed for their amusement until, borne on ten men's shoulders, Agouhanna, the lord and king of the country, wearing the skins of red hedgehogs in place of a crown, was brought in and placed by the side of their captain, on a great stag's skin; and how their captain, seeing the people's misery, read them in a loud, clear voice the first chapter of St. John's Gospel. Tales, too, young Ralegh would hear of other wild men and of their prodigious wealth, which they knew not the value of; of rubies and of pearls bartered for iron and toys; of the great creatures morses or sea-oxen, "which fish is very big, and hath two great teeth, and the skinne of them is like Buffe's leather, and they will not go away from their young ones." And at Bristol was living Mr. Alexander Woodson, an excellent mathematician and skilful physician, and he, writes Hakluyt, "shewed me one of these beast's teeth which were brought from the isle of Ramea in the first prize, which was half a yard long or very little less; and assured mee