[XXII‑34] In 1595 travellers without passports visited the Isthmus in such numbers as to cause scarcity of provisions, and often included men whose services were needed in the army. The oidores were threatened with penalties unless there was a reform in this matter. Reales Cédulas, in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., xvii. 410.
[XXII‑35] Herrera, dec. iii. lib. x. cap. ix. As early as 1526 this matter received special notice from the emperor, and many regulations were made in subsequent years, but apparently to little purpose.
[XXII‑36] The Spanish minister in London remonstrated in strong terms against Parker's conduct, but to no purpose. Queen Elizabeth not only justified his action but warmly commended him. Darien, Scots Colony, 56 (1699).
[XXII‑37] Reales Cédulas, in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., xvii. 395-7, 432-3, 490, 522-3.
[XXII‑38] See [p. 49] this vol. for map of territory.
[XXIII‑1] In Clark's Life of Drake, 7, and Burton's English Heroe, 11, it is stated that in an apartment of the governor's house was a stack of silver bars 70 feet long, 10 in breadth, and 12 feet high, and that the captives gave information that the treasure-house contained more gold, jewels, and pearls than their pinnaces could carry; but one must make due allowance for the vivid imagination of those chroniclers.
[XXIII‑2] The account given in Hakluyt's Voy., iii. 778-9, differs materially from that of other authorities. The story is told by a Portuguese, one Lopez Vaz, whose narrative the chronicles tells us 'was intercepted with the author thereof at the river of Plate, by Captaine Withrington and Captaine Christopher Lister, in the fleete set foorth by the right Honorable the Erle of Cumberland for the South sea in the yeere 1586.' He states that Drake landed with 150 men, and stationing 70 of them in the fort near Nombre de Dios, marched with the remainder into the town; that the inhabitants fled to the mountains, but that a party of 14 or 15 Spanish arquebusiers fired a volley upon the English, killing their trumpeter and wounding Drake in the leg. Hereupon, he says, the English retreated to the fort but found it abandoned; sounding the trumpet after the firing had ceased and the signal being unanswered, the men left in charge retreated to their boats, thinking that their comrades were either slain or captured. Drake and his followers then threw away their arms, and by swimming and wading made their way to the pinnaces. It is highly improbable that 80 English privateersmen, under the command of such a captain as Drake, would thus tamely beat a retreat before a handful of Spaniards.
[XXIII‑3] Islas y Porto de Bastimentos according to Juan Lopez, son of Tomás Lopez de Vargas, the celebrated Spanish cosmographer, in a map prepared by the former in 1789, for the use of the Spanish ambassador in Great Britain. In the map following the introduction to Dampier's Voy., published in 1699, the word is similarly spelled and applied to a group of islands off Nombre de dios. Bellin, Karte von der Erdenge, Panamá, 1754, agrees with Drake, but like Lopez places the group about half way between Nombre de Dios and Portobello. The author of Life and Dangerous Voy. of Drake, 16, speaks of 'the Isle of Bastimiensis or the Isle of Victuals.' See Cartography Pacific States, MS., and [Hist. Cent. Am.], i. passim, this series.
[XXIII‑4] This visit to the Isla de Pinos is not mentioned in Clark's Life of Drake, but is described circumstantially in Burton's English Heroe, 26. In the latter work it is stated that the supplies captured were sufficient to victual a force of 3,000 men, and it is not improbable that this was the case, for the galleons were now off the coast and the Isla de Pinos was the usual storing place for provisions.
[XXIII‑5] In the map prepared by Juan Lopez, these islands are placed a few miles east of point San Blas and named the 'Islas Cabezas ó Cautivas.' By Burton they are also called the Cabezas, but by Clark the Cativaas.