ORIGIN OF ENGLISH PIRACY--SIR JOHN HAWKINS--FRANCIS DRAKE--HIS FIRST VOYAGE TO THE SPANISH MAIN--COMMISSION GRANTED BY QUEEN ELIZABETH--EXPEDITION AGAINST THE SPANISH POSSESSIONS--EXPLOITS AT MOGADOR AND SANTIAGO--CROSSING THE LINE--ARRIVAL IN PATAGONIA--TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF DOUGHTY--PASSAGE THROUGH MAGELLAN'S STRAIT--ADVENTURES OF WILLIAM PITCHER AND SEVEN MEN--CAPE HORN--ARRIVAL AT VALPARAISO--RIFLING OF A CATHOLIC CHURCH. We have thus shown that, while the Spanish and Portuguese had succeeded triumphantly in their maritime expeditions, the English had disastrously failed in theirs. The tropics were held in exclusive possession by the two former nations; and the only two known routes by which ships could sail thither were also in their power. These two nations were Catholic: England was Protestant, and disinherited therefore, as it seemed, of her lawful share in the riches of the world. She had thus far wasted her means and endangered the lives of her citizens in fruitless attempts to find a route for herself, by the northwest or the northeast, to the lands of gold and gums. Baffled in these efforts, she permitted, if she did not encourage, a certain class of her subjects to engage in a system of warfare against Spain which can be characterized by no milder term than piracy. Still, those who resorted to it adduced ready arguments to prove that, so far from engaging in piratical practices, they were employed in open warfare and an honest cause. Spain and England were in a state of manifest enmity, they urged, more bitter on both sides than if they had been avowedly at war. No English subject trading in the Spanish dominions was safe unless he were a Roman Catholic, or unless, being a heretic, he succumbed to the menaces or the tortures of the Holy Inquisition. These outrages were resented by the English people before they were taken up by the British Government; and the injured parties, calling to their aid all persons of adventurous spirit or shattered fortunes, set out upon the sea, if not with the commission, at least with the connivance, of the crown, to avenge their wrongs themselves. They did not consider themselves to be pirates, because of this tacit sanction given by the Government, because of the fact that they carried on hostilities, not against all who traversed the sea, but against the Spaniards only, and because of the risk they ran,--for if taken by the enemy they had no mercy to expect. It thus became the fashion in England for men of desperate fortunes and damaged character to seek to retrieve the one and redeem the other by cruising against the Spaniards.