POLICY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH--THOMAS CAVENDISH--HIS FIRST VOYAGE--EXPLOITS UPON THE AFRICAN AND BRAZILIAN COASTS--PORT DESIRE--PORT FAMINE--BATTLES WITH THE ARAUCANIANS--CAPTURE OF PAITA--ROBBERY OF A CHURCH--REPEATED ACTS OF BRIGANDAGE--CAPTURE OF THE SANTA ANNA--THE RETURN VOYAGE--CAVENDISH'S ACCOUNT OF THE EXPEDITION--THE SPANISH ARMADA--PREPARATIONS IN ENGLAND--THE CONFLICT--TOTAL ROUT OF THE INVINCIBLES--PROCESSION IN COMMEMORATION OF THE EVENT. Queen Elizabeth had found it to her advantage to encourage displays of public spirit in private individuals, and to excite the nobles and persons of fortune who were ambitious of distinction, as well as the indigent in search of employment, to hazard, the one their wealth, the other their lives, in the national service. She thus derived benefit from a class of people who had been of little use in any other reign. Many gentlemen of rank and position devoted a portion of their means to harassing the Spanish at sea, to prosecuting discovery in distant quarters, and to planting colonies upon savage coasts. Among the most distinguished of these was Thomas Cavendish, of Trimley, near Ipswich. [Illustration: CAVENDISH IN BRAZIL.] This gentleman was of an honorable family, and possessed a large estate. He equipped, in 1586, three ships of the requisite burden,--the largest, the Desire, being of one hundred and forty tons, the lesser, the Content, being of sixty, and the least, the Hugh Gallant, a bark of forty tons. He provisioned them for two years, and manned them with one hundred and twenty-three officers and men, some of whom had served under Sir Francis Drake. His patron, Lord Hunsdon, procured him a commission from Queen Elizabeth, thus assimilating his vessels to those of the navy, and rendering his contemplated piracies legitimate. Cavendish sailed from Plymouth on the 21st of July, directing his course to the south and touching upon the coasts of Guinea and Sierra Leone. Here the crew destroyed a negro town, in revenge for the death of one of their men, whom the inhabitants had killed with a poisoned arrow. Their course across the Atlantic to the Brazilian shore offers no remarkable features. They erected their forge upon an island, where they healed their sick and built a pinnace. Anchoring in a harbor on the Patagonian coast, Cavendish named it Port Desire, after his flag-ship,--a name which it still retains. He seems to have considered the savages to be giants, and asserts that he saw footprints eighteen inches long. He entered the Strait at the commencement of January, 1587, and soon discovered a miserable and forlorn settlement of Spaniards. These numbered twenty-three men, being all that remained of four hundred who had been left there three years before, by Sarmiento, to colonize the Strait. They had lived in destitution for the last eighteen months, being able to procure no other food than a scanty supply of shell-fish, except when they surprised a thirsty deer or