tons of the richest merchandise, of which Cavendish could only take forty tons for each of his ships, which were already laden to the full. According to the narrative of N. H., ‘this was one of the richest vessels that ever sailed on the seas; and was able to have made many hundreds wealthy if we had had means to have brought it home.’ Cavendish also took out of the Great St. Anna two youths born in Japan and three boys natives of Manilla, the youngest of whom, about nine years old, afterwards found a home with the Countess of Essex. He also took Nicholas Roderigo, a Portuguese, who had resided in Canton and other parts of China, from whom he probably obtained the large map of China referred to at length by Hakluyt (p. 813), and Thomas de Ersola, a Spanish pilot for the Philippines. On the afternoon of 19 Nov., after having burnt his great prize with its contents to the water's edge, Cavendish joyfully set sail alone towards England, leaving the Content in the road, whose company they never saw afterwards. Cavendish continued his voyage across the Pacific until 3 Jan. 1588, when he sighted the island of Guana (Guajan), one of the Ladrones, where he met with a reception from the natives strikingly similar to that experienced by Magellan on their first discovery in 1521. Eleven days later, falling in with Capo Spirito Santo, on the island of Tadaia (Samar), he commenced his tortuous navigation of the Philippines and Moluccas, so evidently misapprehended by Molyneux in his praiseworthy attempt to track and record it on his famous globe of 1593.
On 15 Jan., while anchoring off the small island of Capul, at the south end of Luzon, Cavendish was compelled for his own safety to hang the Spanish pilot De Ersola, who, by a secret letter, attempted to betray him into the hands of the authorities at Manilla, then an unwalled town guarded by galleys. On 24 Jan., after making the island of Masbate, he passed between Panama (Panay) and the island of Negroes, and sailing west of Mindanoa, he directed his course S.E. until 8 Feb., when he sighted Batochina (Batchian), one of the Moluccas S. of Gilolo. Here we are met by two geographical puzzles. According to N. H., Cavendish sailed down the Straits of Macassar to the W. of the Celebes, for he writes ‘we ran between Celebes or Batachina and Borneo until the 12th day of February’ (Hakluyt, 1589, p. 812). In consequence, Molyneux in his globe (see infra) assigns the name of Batachina to the Celebes; this error, however, is corrected by Pretty, who writes: ‘On the 14th day of February we fell with eleven or twelve very small islands, lying low and flat. These islands (evidently the Xullas), near the Moluccas, stand in three degrees, 10 minutes to the southward of the line’ (ib. iii. 820). Again, on 28 Feb. N. H. writes: ‘We put through between the Straits of Java major and Java minor and ankered under the south-west part of Java major’ (ib. 1589, p. 812). The identity of Java major with Java proper is undisputed, but the hitherto unsettled questions have been, the identification of the Straits, Java minor, and the anchorage. Professor Arber (English Garner, iv. 125) holds that the Straits were those of Sunda, W. of Java proper. Colonel Yule, however, suggests (Marco Polo, ii. 267) that they were the Straits of Baly, E. of Java, and that the Java minor of Cavendish was the island of Baly. Both these assumptions are, however, disproved by Thos. Fuller, the sailing master of the Desire, who writes: ‘From the W. end of Java minor unto the E. end of Java major the course is W. and by N. and E. and by S. and the distance between them is 18 leagues; in the which course there lieth an island between them, which island (referred to in the margin as Baly) is in length 14 leagues’ (ib. iii. 832). Again he writes: ‘The first day of March wee passed the Straights at the W. head of the island of Java minor (i.e. Lombok), and the 5th day of March we ankered in the bay at the Wester (sic) end of Java maior, where wee watered and had great store of victuals from the town of Polambo’ (ib. p. 834). Pretty adds to the confusion when he writes that the king of that (i.e. the W.) part of the island was ‘Raja Bolamboang,’ who it is to be feared has been confounded with the Raja of Balamboang, whose descendants were to be found at the E. end of Java down to 1788 (cf. Van der Aa). From this it follows that, after passing through the Straits of Lombok with Baly, on the E., Cavendish sailed along the S. coast of Java proper for five days, and that his anchorage for twelve days afterwards was at Paliboam-Ratoe, in Wijnkoopers Bay, under the S.W. end of Java, as stated by all the three narratives of N. H., Pretty, and Fuller. From 11 March and all through April Cavendish traversed the main between Java and Africa, when on 19 March he sighted the long-wished-for Cape of Good Hope. On 8 June he anchored under the island of St. Helena, where he stayed twelve days for refreshment, and was the first to discover it to the English nation. On 20 June he shaped his course for England, where, upon arriving off the Lizard 3 Sept., he was greeted by a Flemish vessel with the news of the overthrow of the Spanish Armada. After encountering a violent storm
