Carate’s retained pilot directed Drake up to and along the coast of North America, and about the middle of April had brought him to the Mexican haven of “Guatulco” (Acapulco). He landed with a few of his men and went presently to the town, where, in the Town-House, a trial of three Negroes charged with conspiring to burn the place was proceeding. Judge, officers, and prisoners were all seized and brought to the ship. The judge was required to write a letter commanding the townspeople to “avoid” that the ship might water here. This done, and the captives released, Drake’s men ransacked the town. In one house they found a pot of the size of a bushel full of reals of plate. A flying Spanish gentleman was overtaken and a gold chain and jewels were filched from him. At this port Nuna da Silva, the Portuguese pilot retained all along from the time of his capture in the Cape Verde Islands, was discharged and put aboard a Spanish ship in the harbour. He subsequently made a written report to the viceroy of New Spain, comprising a circumstantial account of the voyage as far as he was compelled to make it. This account passed from that official to the viceroy of the Portugal-Indies, and some years afterward got to England, when Hakluyt published it. It follows the narrative of the chronicler of Drake’s company in the _Principal Navigations_, and well supplements that. Now, at Acapulco, or at an island below this port which the chronicler calls “Canno,” while his “Golden Hind” was undergoing a complete refitting, Drake was pondering his future course. His ship was rich in treasure, and his company were thinking of home. He now felt himself “both in respect of his private injuries received from the Spaniards, as also of the contempts and indignities offered” to his country, “sufficiently satisfied and revenged”; and he believed that the queen would be contented with this service. Accordingly he decided no longer to continue on the coast of New Spain. But whither should he turn? It was unwise to go back as he had come. It was not well to make return by the Strait of Magellan for two reasons: “the one, lest the Spaniards should there waite and attend for him in great number and strength whose hands, hee being left but one ship, could not possibly escape.” And it happened that a fleet was actually making ready for this purpose. The other was the dangerous situation of the Pacific mouth of the strait with “continuall stormes reigning and blustering, as he had found by experience, besides the shoalds and sands upon the coast.” Finally, after consultation with his “council,” he resolved to strike boldly out into the great sea and make for the Moluccas, the Spice Islands, of the East Indian Archipelago. He may have been influenced toward this decision through his capture while at Canno of a prize with two pilots and a Spanish governor on board bound for the Philippines; or by an earlier taking from the Spaniards, according to Silva’s account, of some