Porto Bello gold

by Arthur D. Howden Smith

"Gold!" he said over again. "Why, there is one little hoard of treasure Prince Charles had to leave behind him—the Loch Arkaig treasure they call it. Cluny MacPherson and Locheil's brother have had the keeping of it, and you'd scarce believe the source of trouble it has been to the English! And it not more than forty thousand louis at the beginning, and dribbling fast before it was turned to account. It has set all the Highlands by the ears—forty thousand louis, spent by fives and tens, a good bit of it going to feed gillies in the heather or gambled away in some clachan of the Cameron country, if what I hear be right.

"Think what a real treasure would accomplish! Think what— But I am going too fast."

He paused, and a slow, strange smile shadowed his face as he drew a finger across the map upon the table.

"I said I would tell you a story," he went on. "But after all 'tis only a dream—a wicked old man's dream, Robert. 'Tis so you think of me, I know—and your father—and Peter there—and—I wonder what the little maid you spoke with would think! Or the poor, throneless old king who huddles over his brazier for warmth in the dreary palace in Rome that is all he has left of his majesty! Or Prince Charlie, who flits back and forth from France to the Low Countries, scheming and plotting and always curbed for lack of—gold!

"Gold! We stumble for lack of it in every enterprise. With sufficient of it you may upset kingdoms, buy pardons, obtain patents and honors and place. 'Tis a definite substance, mark you, hard and shining and heavy in the hand—not such thistle-down as dreams are made o'.

"But the virtue of dreams, Robert—" he addressed himself direct to me, seeming to forget that Peter was present—"is that they can be transmuted into that which is palpable and finite, aye, even into gold. And the dreams of a wicked old man may become as efficacious to right wrong or to throw down the mighty or to redeem the weak and the persecuted as the gold which Indian slaves mine under the whip of Spanish masters. For the dream may lead to the gold. What is the ancient saw? 'First the thought, then the deed.'

"When was the thought born? I can not say. Flint and I had often sought the yearly treasure-ship, but never had sight of her. Then one day the idea came to me to utilize my Jacobite friends in France and Spain. They leaped at the suggestion, for to say truth, Robert, both Spaniards and Frenchmen have treated our party shabbily. An intrigue was set afoot through the medium of a cardinal who is partial to King James, and so we gained access to the Council of the Indies. A bribe, which I supplied, procured for O'Donnell, already an officer on the regular establishment of the Spanish forces, appointment as an Inspector of Fortifications of the ports on the Main. And with the prestige of this post and the assistance of our friend the cardinal 'twas easy for O'Donnell to secure complete information as to the Council's plans for the dispatch of this year's treasure-ship."

His forefinger explored the chart before us and came to rest upon a dot on the flank of the narrow neck of land which joins the two Americas.

"There is Porto Bello, which was the port of the old treasure galleons and discarded as such by the Spaniards after Morgan sacked it. But later they restored and strengthened the fortifications, although in the late war our Admiral Vernon carried it by surprize. At that time Cartagena was the treasure center, and when Vernon attempted it he was repulsed with loss. Two years since the Council of the Indies decided to resume sailings from Porto Bello, which is the most advantageously situated of all ports on the Main for the collection of the treasure.

"See! 'Tis about midway betwixt Mexico and Peru, and the mines of Veragua are at its back door. The treasures of the South Sea islands can be fetched by sea to Panama and thence carried overland by the recoes, the royal mule-trains which are the link betwixt Panama and the West Coast and the cities of the Main. The Peruvian treasures come by the same route. Those from Mexico are fetched south from La Vera Cruz by a ship under escort of the Garda Costas and transferred at Porto Bello to the ship for Spain, which puts forth about the beginning or middle of September.