# Panama, past and present/Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI
HOW SIR FRANCIS DRAKE RAIDED THE ISTHMUS
SIXTY years after Balboa's discovery of the Pacific, the first Englishman to see that ocean looked at it from the top of a "goodlie and great high tree," somewhere in the jungle back of Old Panama. This man was Francis Drake, a bold sea-captain of Devon, who had come to the Isthmus to pay a debt he had long owed the Spaniards: a debt of revenge for treacherous wrong.
Five years before, in 1568, an English fleet under Sir John Hawkins had entered the harbor of San Juan de Ulloa (now Vera Cruz), in Mexico, ready either to trade peacefully with the Spaniards, or, if the latter preferred, to fight. The Spaniards received them as friends, exchanged hostages as evidence of good faith, waited until a very much larger Spanish fleet had come in, and then suddenly attacked the English with both ships and forts. After an all-day's fight, every English ship but two was captured, sunk, or ablaze; but the Minion of Hawkins, and Francis Drake's Judith fought their way out and carried the news to England. Queen Elizabeth could not go to war with Spain, then the mightiest power on earth, but she winked her royal eye at the private acts of her seamen.
Drake first made two quiet voyages to the Isthmus, to learn how the Spaniards handled the treasure-trade from ​Peru, and how he could best attack it. It is said that Drake even lived for a while in disguise at Nombre de Dios, which had been resettled and made the Atlantic port in 1519, the same year as the founding of Old Panama. A roughly paved way, called the Royal Road, had been built between the two cities by the forced labor of captive Indians, and over this in the dry season long trains of pack-mules carried the gold and silver that was brought up by sea from Peru to Panama, across the Isthmus to Nombre de Dios. During the nine months of the rainy season the route was over a better road from Panama to the little town of Venta Cruz, now called Cruces, at the head of navigation on the Chagres River, and down this river in flat-boats and canoes to the sea. Once a year a fleet of galleons came from Spain, bringing European goods for the colonists and carrying away the treasure that had been accumulating since the last trip in the King's treasure-house at Nombre de Dios. The English called this the "Plate Fleet," from the Spanish word plata, or silver.
Nombre de Dios was a ragged little town mostly bamboo huts and board shacks, except for the King's treasure-house, which was "very strongly built of lime and stone." The place was so unhealthy that it was known as "The Grave of the Spaniard," and most of the citizens spent the rainy season at Panama or Cruces, and only returned to Nombre de Dios to do business when the plate-fleet was in.
Drake learned all these things after two years' prowling up and down the coast, so in 1572 he made a third voyage to the Isthmus to put this knowledge to practical ​effect. Sailing boldly into Nombre de Dios harbor, at three o'clock in the morning on the twenty-ninth of July, Drake tumbled ashore with seventy-three men and captured
"NOMBRE DE DIOS"—STREET SCENE.
the sea-battery before the Spaniards could fire a single one of its six brass guns. Dismounting these, the English marched into the plaza, with drums beating, trumpets sounding, and six "fire-pikes" or torches lighting the way with a lurid glare. There was a volley of shot from the Spanish musketeers, an answering flight of English arrows, a rush, a brief, brisk hand-to-hand fight, and the defenders went flying through the landward gate and down the road to Panama.
In the governor's house the English found a stack of solid silver bars, seventy feet long, ten wide, and twelve ​high, worth more than five million dollars but too heavy to carry away. So they went to the King's treasure-house for the gold and jewels stored there. "I have brought you to the mouth of me treasury of the world!" cried Drake, and ordered them to break in the door. But an instant later, he fell fainting from loss of blood, for during the fight in the plaza he had received a great wound in the thigh, which he had kept concealed until then. And you can realize how much his men loved Francis Drake, when in spite of his commands they left the treasure to get their wounded captain back to the
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.
Born in Devonshire, about 1540; died off Porto Bello, in 1596.
boats. The garrison and citizens were rallying, and more troops had just come from Panama, but all the English got safely off, except one of the trumpeters.
For the next six months Drake raided impudently up and down the coast, even capturing a ship in the harbor of Cartagena, the capital city of the Spanish Main, and the Spaniards dared not attack him. Then, when his wound was healed, and the dry season had come, he set out with eighteen Englishmen and thirty Cimaroons from his secret camping-place on the Atlantic shore to cross the Isthmus. The Cimaroons were some ​of the many negroes who had been brought to the Isthmus as slaves, to take the place of the almost exterminated Indians, but had escaped from their Spanish masters into the jungle. Here they intermarried with the Indians, built towns of their own, and defied the Spaniards. Bands of Cimaroons, armed with bows and spears,—firearms were above their understanding—roamed the forest or raided pack-trains on the Royal Road. And this was what they were now helping Drake to do, as for centuries afterwards, both Cimaroons and Indians helped every enemy of Spain that came their way.
The galleons from Spain were at Nombre de Dios, waiting for the pack-trains to bring across the treasure from the other plate-fleet from Peru, that Drake saw riding at anchor in the harbor of Panama. He had not enough men to go near the city, but as soon as they had seen the Pacific from the "goodlie and great high tree" Drake and his comrade, John Oxenham, both took oath that they would some day sail an English ship on that sea.
A Cimaroon, sent into the city as a spy, brought out the news that three pack-trains were to leave Panama that night, traveling by moonlight to escape the heat, and laden, one with provisions, one with silver, and one with gold and jewels. A carefully planned ambush was laid on either side of the Royal Road, not far from Venta Cruz, but a silly sailor, named Robert Pike, spoiled everything by jumping up to look at a Spaniard who came riding out from the town. This horseman warned the train-escort, who sent forward the mules loaded with provisions. When Drake captured these, he knew the ​treasure-train had escaped him, so he charged into Venta Cruz to see what he could find there. But there was no treasure in the village, only some Spanish ladies who were dreadfully frightened, until Drake assured them that no woman or unarmed man had ever been harmed by him.
NATIVES PREPARING RICE FOR DINNER—NOMBRE DE DIOS.
When he had returned to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, Drake joined forces with some English freebooters, and they laid another ambush on the Royal Road, this time only a mile out of Nombre de Dios. At dawn, a string of a hundred and ninety mules came tinkling and pattering along from Panama, with an escort of forty-five Spanish soldiers. A volley dropped the lead-mules, the rest promptly lay down, and the escort broke and ran to Nombre de Dios, leaving Drake's men the richer by fifteen tons of gold and as much silver. The latter they buried round about, in the holes of the ​land-crabs, and it is said that the Spaniards were never able to find it, and that it must be there to-day. As for the gold, Drake divided it fairly, and sailed back to England with his share.
Two years later, in 1575, John Oxenham returned to the Isthmus, crossed it with the aid of the Cimaroons, built and launched a pinnace on the southern side, and
SAN BLAS INDIAN SQUAWS IN NATIVE DRESS.
Note the gold nose-rings.
was the first Englishman to sail the Pacific. How he raided the Pearl Islands and was captured and put to death by the Spaniards from Panama, you can read best in Kingsley's noble story of "Westward Ho!"
It was left for Drake to enter this sea that Spain had claimed for her own, through the strait Magellan had found in 1520, and to be the next after him to sail round the world. How, with one little ship, the Golden Hind, Drake swept the west coast of South America, and took the great treasure-galleon Cacafuego a hundred and fifty leagues from Panama; how with a fleet he took and burned the city of Santo Domingo (but spared the cathedral because it held the ashes of Christopher Columbus), ​and sacked Cartagena; how with Sir John Hawkins he wiped out the memory of San Juan de Ulloa in the great Armada fight; how he won knighthood and "singed the King of Spain's beard," are all parts of another noble story for which there is no room here.
The dream of Drake's life was to capture the city of Panama. In 1595, he brought a fleet to the Isthmus with Sir John Hawkins, captured and burned Nombre de Dios, and landed seven hundred and fifty soldiers to march across to Panama. But the Spaniards had barricaded the Royal Road too strongly, and, besides, a great deal of sickness broke out on the fleet. So the English gave it up, and set sail for Columbus's old port of Porto Bello, but before they reached this harbor their admiral was dead.
They buried him a league from shore, and as the leaden coffin sank beneath the waves, the guns of the fleet roared a farewell broadside, and a fort that the Spaniards had built to defend their new town of Porto Bello was given to the flames. This was on the twenty-eighth of January, 1596. Some people declare that "Francis Drake lies buried in Nombre Dios bay"; but those who did the burying say Porto Bello. And Captain William Parker, who captured that town only six years later,—in spite of its fine new forts,—marks on his chart a spot not far outside the harbor as "the Place where my Shippes roade, being the rock where Sir Francis Drake his Coffin was throwne overboorde."