NOTE.—Henri Harrisse’s _Jean et Sébastien Cabot, leur origine et leurs voyages_, has been published since this chapter was completed. CHAPTER II. HAWKINS AND DRAKE. BY THE REV. EDWARD EVERETT HALE, D.D., _Massachusetts Historical Society._ THE English voyagers had no mind to content themselves with adventure in those more rugged regions to which the Cabots had introduced them. Whether in peace or war, their relations with Spain were growing closer and closer all through the sixteenth century. Sebastian Cabot, in fact, soon passed into the service of the Spanish Crown. Indeed, if we had no other memorial of the intimacy between English and Spanish navigators, we could still trace it in our language, which has derived many of its maritime words from Spanish originals. The seamen of England found their way everywhere, and soon acquainted themselves with the coasts of the West India Islands and the Spanish main. There exists, indeed, in the English archives a letter written as early as 1518 by the Treasurer-General of the West Indies to Queen Katherine, the unhappy wife of Henry VIII., in which he describes to her the peculiarities of his island home. He sends to her a cloak of feathers such as were worn by native princesses. From that time forward, allusions to the new discoveries appear in English literature and in the history of English trade.[135] Still, it would be fair to say, that, for thirty years after the discovery of America, that continent attracted as little attention in England as the discovery of the Antarctic continent, forty years ago, has attracted in America up to this time. It belongs to another chapter to trace the gradual steps by which the English fisheries developed England’s knowledge of America. The instincts of trade led men farther south, in a series of voyages which will be briefly traced in this chapter. One of the earliest of them, which may be taken as typical, is that of William Hawkins, of Plymouth. Not content with the short voyages commonly made to the known coasts of Europe, Hawkins “armed out a tall and goodly ship of his own,” in which he made three voyages to Brazil, and skirted, after the fashion of the time, the African coast. He carried thither negroes whom he had taken on the coast of Guinea. He deserves the credit, therefore, such as it is, of beginning that African slave-trade in which England was engaged for nearly three centuries. The second of these voyages seems to have been made as early as 1530. He brought to England, from the coast of Brazil, a savage king, whose ornaments, apparel, behavior, and gestures were very strange to the English king and his nobility. These three voyages were so successful, that a number of Southampton merchants followed them up, at least as late as 1540.