Drake avowed to Doughty his belief that to strike effectively at the
gigantic power of Spain, England must raid the colonies--not the West
Indies alone, but the rich western provinces of Peru and Chili. No one
had been south of Patagonia since its discovery, sixty years before.
Geographers still held that beyond the Straits of Magellan a huge
Antarctic continent existed. From that unknown region of darkness and
tempest came the great heaving ground-swell, the tidal wave and the
hurricane. Even Spanish pilots never used the perilous southern route.
Treasure went overland across the Isthmus. Every year an elephantine
treasure-ship sailed from Panama westward through the South Sea; and
there was a rich trade between the American mines and the Orient and the
Spanish peninsula, by way of the Cape of Good Hope. Doughty's
imagination was fired by the gorgeous possibilities of the idea, and
when he became the secretary of Christopher Hatton, the Queen's handsome
Captain of the Guard, he laid the plan before him with all the eloquence
of his persuasive tongue. Hatton finally obtained from Elizabeth a
promise to contribute a thousand crowns to the cost of an expedition to
penetrate the South Seas. This, however, was only on condition that the
affair should be kept secret, above all from Burleigh, who was certain
to use every effort to stop it.
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