Warships hung about the
Patagonian coast to catch him on his way home--surely he could not stay
at sea forever!
But Drake had other plans. Navigators were still searching for the
northern passage, the Straits of Anian, and he coasted northward until
his men were half paralyzed with cold and the creeping chill of the fog.
From the latitude of Vancouver he turned south again, and put into a
natural harbor not far from the present San Francisco, which he named
New Albion because of the white cliffs like the chalk downs of England.
Here he landed and made camp to refit and repair his flagship. He had
captured on one prize, two China pilots in whose possession were all the
secret charts of the Pacific trade.
Indians ventured down from the mountains to the little fort and
dockyard, wondering and admiring. Parson Fletcher presently came to the
Admiral with the extraordinary news that they were worshiping the
English as gods. Horror and laughter contended among the Puritans when
they found themselves set up as idols of the heathen, and the chaplain
endeavored by signs to teach the simple savages that the God whom all
men should worship was invisible in the heavens.
"'T only shows," remarked Moone, with a nail in one corner of his mouth,
after vehemently dissuading a persistent adorer, "that a man never knows
what he'll come to.
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