His mother died a few days after giving him birth; his father, Pynaston Hastings, drifted away to perish obscurely in the West Indies.
In December 1654 Penn and Venables sailed for the West Indies with orders to attack the Spanish colonies and the French shipping; and for the first time since the Plantagenets an English fleet appeared in the Mediterranean, where Blake upheld the supremacy of the English flag, made a treaty with the dey of Algiers, destroyed the castles and ships of the dey of Tunis at Porto Farina on the 4th of April 1655, and liberated the English prisoners captured by the pirates.
At length one of the midshipmen suggested the device of " fothering," which he had seen practised in the West Indies.
The highlands of Central America and the West Indies have preserved a number of Chino-Japanese typesBocconia, Deutzia, A belie, &c.not met with elsewhere in the New Woild.
The voyages of Columbus (1492-1498) resulted in the discovery of the West Indies and North America which barred the way to the Far East.
