Excerpt from Francis Drake OF all the heroes whose exploits have set our history aglow with romance there is not one who so soon passed into legend as Francis Drake. He was not dead before his life became a fairy tale, and he himself as indistinct as Sir Guy of Warwick or Croquemitaine. His exploits loomed in mythical extravagance through the mists in which, for high reasons of State, they long remained enveloped, and to the people he seemed some boisterous hero of a folk-tale outwitting and belabouring a clumsy ogre. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.