the king of Spain's preparations". The first part of this work was written by Walter Bigges, a soldier officer; he died shortly after leaving Cartagena and the account was continued by Croftes, the lieutenant of Bigges' company. The expedition had been successful in that many Spanish settlements had been plundered and destroyed and a severe blow dealt to Spanish trade, but Croftes describes the difficulties faced by the English fleet, their sufferings from sickness, bad weather, and lack of water. It was only Drake's personal influence, courage and energy that kept them together. This was the voyage on which they brought into England, it is believed for the first time, tobacco and potatoes. 1596 In 1594, Sir Walter Raleigh, interested in the Spanish legend of the riches of the city of Manoa (Eldorado) in South America, sent out an expedition to Guiana (modern Venezuela). He sailed to Guiana himself the following year and in 1596, after his return to England, sent out a third expedition under Lawrence Keymis. Raleigh's final expedition to South America in 1617 resulted in armed conflict with the Spanish and this in turn led to his execution in 1618. , written to refute those who claimed that Raleigh had never been to Guiana, is a storehouse of first-hand impressions and its influence can be traced in the works of Chapman, Shakespeare and Milton. It was an Elizabethan best-seller and the printer Robert Robinson produced no less than three editions of it in the year 1596. 1596 Nicolás Monardes' Joyfull newes out of the new-found worlde is a translation by John Frampton, a merchant who spent most of his life in Spain, of Monardes' Primera y segunda y tercera partes de la historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias occidentales qui sirven en medicinal, published in Seville in 1574. Nicolas Monardes was one of the most distinguished Spanish physicians of his time. He studied medicine at Alcalá de Henares, where Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros had founded schools of medicine and botany, and which was famous as a centre of medical research at a period when Spain had a high reputation in Europe as a leader of medical science. At the time Monardes wrote his book he had been practising in Seville for forty years; new medicines, still untried in Europe, but by reputation in the Indies, possessing almost magical properties, were constantly being