To return to Drake: that famous captain set out from Plymouth in a squadron, manned by one hundred and sixty-three seamen, on the 13th of September 1577, and sailed to the coast of _Barbary_ for refreshments. He commenced his depredations by seizing three Spanish fishing-boats; he likewise captured three _caravels_. From _Cape Blanco_ he proceeded to the _Cape de Verdes_, and thence stood for the Island of _St. Iago_, where he captured a Portuguese ship. Near the equator his vessels were becalmed for three weeks, and for fifty-five days Drake saw no land before arriving on the coast of _Brazil_. The expedition touched in the river _Plate_, but merely remained a short time, when it proceeded to the southward, and anchored in a bay in forty-seven degrees S. latitude. Two of his ships were now missing, but one of them was here found by a vessel sent in search of them. In these parts our countrymen first became acquainted with the race who derive the name by which they are known to us from the height of _Pentagones_, or five cubits, equal to seven and a half feet, with which Magellan credited them. Mr. Fletcher, who accompanied Drake, states that these people were of large stature, but he does not ascribe to them gigantic proportions. At a later period, Commodore Byron described one of these Patagonians as a frightful colossus of not less than seven feet. He was no doubt an exception. They are in fact a tall race, but not more so than well-grown Englishmen. Writing only the other day, Lady Florence Dixie states that a tall Patagonian was of precisely the same height as her husband, namely, six feet two inches, and there is no reason to suppose that the race has physically degenerated since Magellan’s time. [Sidenote: 1578.] On the 20th of June Drake’s whole force anchored in _Fort St. Julian_, where two of his men were shot by the natives. One of the objects which attracted attention was a gibbet which had been set up by Magellan seventy years before. At this place Mr. John Doughty was put on his trial for conspiring to raise a mutiny in the fleet, and, being found guilty by a jury, was condemned to be beheaded. The fleet was now reduced to the “Pelican,” which name was soon changed to the “Golden Hind,” the “Elizabeth,” and the “Marigold,” with which on the 20th of August Drake arrived at the entrance of the _Straits of Magellan_. On one side he observed an island “burning aloft in the air in a wonderful sort without intermission.” On the 6th of September, having passed the strait, Drake entered the Pacific, which term must have seemed to him rather a misnomer, since he found it rough and turbulent above measure, a tempest carrying his ships a hundred leagues to the westward and separating them. It may be observed that this was the second occasion on which the _Straits of Magellan_ had been passed. Near the western outlet, Drake landed on an island which he named after Queen Elizabeth.