In 1579 a new portent appeared in the Far East. In the month of November there arrived at the Island of Ternate, from nowhere, as it seemed, an English ship, the _Golden Hinde_, commanded by FRANCIS DRAKE. This most remarkable English adventurer--then only thirty-four years old--had been purser to a ship trading to the north of Spain when he was only eighteen, and by the age of twenty-two had not only made a voyage to Guinea, but was commanding a ship as captain in an attack on the Spaniards off the coast of Mexico. In 1577 he had navigated the Straits of Magellan in the _Golden Hinde_ (originally the _Pelican_, which he renamed thus as a remembrance of the heraldic device of Sir Christopher Hatton and a mark of joy at having safely reached the Pacific Ocean), had sailed up the west coast of South America, attacking and plundering Spanish ships and towns "till his men were satiated with plunder"; and, failing to find another Magellan's Straits in North-west America to take him back to the Atlantic, had boldly sailed from the coast of New Albion (the modern State of Washington) aslant the Pacific Ocean and steered a straight course for the Moluccas. The Portuguese, of course, were then predominant in the Spice Islands and elsewhere in Malaysia, and with them Drake had no quarrel. He therefore sailed on to Java (after nearly coming to grief by striking a rock off the coast of Celebes), and from Java made his way round the Cape of Good Hope to the Guinea coast, and thence to the Azores and England. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth on board the _Golden Hinde_ at Deptford, after the queen had partaken of a banquet on board the famous ship which had sailed round the world in two years and ten months. His voyage was a splendid answer to the Spaniards, who believed themselves perfectly safe from interference in the waters of the "great Southern Ocean", and who forbade the rest of the world to trade with America and Australasia. Within eighteen years it was to be followed up by Dutch and British attacks, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, on the Portuguese and Spanish monopoly of intercourse with the East Indies and Malaysia. It is, however, only fair to mention that in the matter of commercial morality the British, French, and Dutch were no more enlightened than the Spaniards. Each sought in turn to make their oversea dependencies regions closed to the trade of other nations than themselves, and even to restrict the commerce of their Asiatic, African, and American colonies to privileged persons or companies. * * * * *