" After
coasting the whole of South America to the extremity of Mexico, he resolved
to seek a northern passage into the Atlantic. With this intention, he
sailed along the coast, to which, from its white cliffs, he gave the name
of New Albion. When he arrived, however, at Cape Blanco, the cold was so
intense, that he abandoned his intention of searching for a passage into
the Atlantic, and crossed the Pacific to the Molucca islands. In this long
passage he discovered only a few islands in 20 deg. north latitude: after an
absence of 1501 days, he arrived at Plymouth. The discoveries made by this
circumnavigator, will, however, be deemed much more important, if the
opinion of Fleurien, in his remarks on the austral lands of Drake, inserted
in the Voyage of Marchand, in which opinion he is followed by Malte Brun,
be correct; viz. that Drake discovered, under the name of the Isles of
Elizabeth, the western part of the archipelago of Terra del Fuego; and that
he reached even the southern extremity of America, which afterwards
received, from the Dutch navigators, the name of Cape Horn. These are all
the well authenticated discoveries made in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, on the north-west coast of America. Cape Mendocino, in about
40-1/2 degrees north latitude, is the extreme limit of the certain
knowledge possessed at this period respecting this coast: the information
possessed respecting New Georgia and New Cornwall was very vague and
obscure.
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