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National Geographic : 1894 Dec 29
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Disagreement of Latitudes. Central America and Mexico from Chili to Guatulco, capturing ships, towns and great treasures of gold, silver and plate, spread ing a reign of terror in that whole region, reached at last the port of Guatulco, a haven a short distance west of Tehuantepec. At Guatulco * Drake, knowing that the whole power of Spain was now aroused and on the qui vive in the South sea, and that the return route by the straits of Magellan was too dangerous and uncertain, both on account of difficult navigation and certain attack from Spanish fleets, boldly resolved to return to England by the Pacific ocean, the Moluccas and East Indies, and the cape of Good Hope, a longer but a safer route. Leaving Guatulco well loaded with plunder, Drake sailed northwestward instead of westward, his true course, some 500 leagues in longitude, and to June 3 1,400 leagues in all, "until we came into 420 north latitude," - but Pretty says 430 of the pole arctic. Although Fletcher and Pretty differ somewhat in their account, both agree that the cold for them was intense, after their long cruise in the tropics. Pretty says, " our men being pinched with the same, complained of the extremity thereof," while Fletcher pithily says, " they seemed to be in the frozen zone." On June 5 our militant chaplain says: " Wee were forced by contrary windes to runne in with the shoare, and so cast anchor in a bad bay." Here the cold continuing and, as Fletcher calls them, " vile, thick and stinking fogges prevailing," § they were unable to remain, but were forced to go no farther north. Curiously enough, at thispoint of his narrative Fletcher seems to have had his mind or his memory much affected, probably by the aforesaid " fogges," for in the next paragraph he gravely tells that this bad bay was in the height (latitude) of 480 north, not far from the entrance of Puget sound into the Pacific ocean. So if Fletcher is correct in his statement as to the latitudes gained, then from June 3 to June 5, 1579, Drake had sailed in three days 6° of latitude, or over 400 miles, or, taking Pretty's estimate of 50, some 350 miles; but when they concluded to leave this locality and return southward, they followedthe coast, which he says was reasonably plain, yet the hills were covered with snow. * World Encompassed, by Fletcher. t Op. cit. f Pretty's narrative or journal. World Encompassed. 209
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