The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1910-01-22
SPANISH EXPLORERS
CONTINUED from page II

guans began to believe their city was accursed that
God avenging the death of their martyred
bishop, whose blood had dried upon, and now, dyed
the steps of the altar where he sank to his death
from the poniard of Hernandez de Contreras. They
began novena to St. James, SPANS patron saint,
and entered upon solemn fast, as did the Nine
vtes of DID, to stay the avenging strokes of God.
succession of calamites followed. and in despair
they resolved to abandon their beloved city and
build Leon by the side of the Indian town of
Subtiaba.
Sunday morning, May 10, 1910, after solemn
high mass the inhabitants of Leon, following their
bishop and clergy, the officers of the fort and mu
nicipaty and bearing aloft the banner of the house
of Braganza, marched in procession through the
gate of San Pedro and babe goodbye forever to the
doomed city. The ruins of old Leon remain to this
day. overgrown with vines and vegetable parasites,
where SCORPIONS lizards and centipedes crawl and
bats dwell. The cruel and sacrligious deed of Con-
reras is yet spoken of with horror among the poems
with whom it fingers as a tradition, and many pro-
fess to see even now the blood of the bishop on the
steps of the altar of the old church
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
the Caribbean sea and Pacific coast swarmed with
French privateers and English corsairs, freeboot
ers of the ocean, unrecognized, uncommissioned,
fighting their own battles on their own response
bility, unlicensed rovers, starving today and to-
morrow gorged with plumber; Henry Morgan,
knighted for his rascally deeds and made governor
of Jamaica, sacked Panama and burned the city;
Drake, the vulture of the Atlantic, and great
object of terror to the floating Spaniards that his
death moved Lopa de Vega to sing hymn of tri-
umph in his epic poem, the 'Dragentea"; Penn and
Venables; Daniels, the Dick Turpin of the Carib
bean sea, who carried chaplain and had prayers
said before sacking town or sinking Spanish
galley.
What a shadowy procession of great and clever
scoundrels of adventurous and courageous cut
throats of corsairs pirates, prvateers and guerias
of the sea- passes before at the command of men,
DRY, and once again. enact their bloody parts in the
tragedies of the centuries that are buried with
them. Conspicuous anon gthese rovers of the sea
Captain Dampier, who, in September, 1856,
sailed up the Realeio with as reckless a crew of
pirates as ever scuttled ship cut throat. Dam
pier entered Leon by night, slaughtered many of its
men and looted the city He burned the hospital,
cathedral, Convent of Mercy and destroyed many
of the finest DWELLINGS,.
1t was of Dampier's coxswain, Charles Kingsley
sang in his clay of the Last Buccaneer" So char
acteristic is this poem of the transformation which
time has brought about that borrow it to ornament
my own prosaic pages.
"The Lay of the Last Buceaneer."
OH England is pleasant place for them that's rich
and high,
But England is cruel place for such poor folks
And such port for mariners, I'll never see again.
As the pleasant isle of AYES beside the Spanish
main
There were forty craft in AYES that were both swift
and stout
All furnished we'll with small arms and cannon all
about;
Aand a thousand men in AYES made laws fair and
To choose their valiant captains and obey them
Loyalty
Then we sailed against the Spaniard with his
boards of plate and gold,
Which he wrung with cruel torture from Indian
folk of DID,
Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as
hard stone,
Who flog men and keelhaul them and starve them
to the bone
Oh! palms grow high in Aves and fruits that shone
like gold,
And the colibris and parrots were gorgeous to be-
hold
And the negro maids to AYES from bondage fast
did flee,
To welcome gallant sailors a sweeping in from sea.
A swing with good tobacco in a net between the
With negro lass to fan you while you listened to
the roar
Of the breakers on the reef outside which never
touched Jl0 SllOTG,
But Scripture saith an ending to all fine things
must be,
So the kings ships sailed against us and quite put
down were we.
All day we fought like bulldogs, but they burned
the booms at night,
And fled in pirogue sore wounded from the fight
Nine days floated starving my negro wife beside
Still for all [ tried to cheer her, the poor Young
thing she died.
But as lay gasping Bristol sail came by
And brought me home to England here to beg until
die.
And now I'm old and going: I'm sure can't tell
where.
One comfort is this worlds so hard can't be worse
off there,
If might but be sea dove, I'd fly across the main
To the pleasant Isle of AYES to live there once
again.
After Nicaragua cut loose from Spain, Leon be-
a revolutionary center, where the opposing
political parties ravenous for the contents of the