With the conquest of this region was obtained the last great store of gold discovered by the plundering Spaniards in South America. These explorers finished when [Transcriber's note: what?] Pizarro had begun in Peru. To convey the treasure from Bogotá to the coast of the Carribean a road was built through the mountains, much of it cut as a narrow shelf in solid rock, winding and dipping in a dizzy route to connect with the upper reaches of navigation on the Rio Magdalena. This was the famous El Camino Real, or "King's Highway" which is still used as one of the roads by which the capital of Colombia, Santa Fé de Bogotá is reached by the traveler of the twentieth century. It was to intercept one of these treasure trains that Amyas Leigh and his doughty comrades of "Westward Ho!" lay in wait, and the fiction of Kingsley will better serve to portray the time and place than the facts as the old historians strung them together.
"Bidding farewell once and forever to the green ocean of the eastern plains, they have crossed the Cordillera; they have taken a longing glance at the city of Santa Fé, lying in the midst of rich gardens on its lofty mountain plateau, and have seen, as was to be expected, that it was far too large for any attempt of theirs. But they have not altogether thrown away their time. Their Indian lad has discovered that a gold-train is going down from Santa Fé toward the Magdalena; and they are waiting for it beside the miserable rut that serves for a road, encamped in a forest of oaks which would make them almost fancy themselves back in Europe were it not for the tree-ferns which form the undergrowth; and were it not for the deep gorges opening at their very feet; in which while their brows are swept by the cool breezes of a temperate zone, they can see far below, dim through their everlasting vapor bath of rank, hot steam, the mighty forms and gorgeous colors of the tropic forest.
"... At last, up from beneath there was a sharp crack and a loud cry. The crack was neither the snapping of a branch, nor the tapping of a woodpecker; the cry was neither the scream of a parrot, nor the howl of a monkey.
"'That was a whip's crack,' said Yeo, 'and a woman's wail. They are close here, lads!'
"'A woman's? Do they drive women in their gangs?' asked Amyas. 'Why not, the brutes? There they are, sir. Did you see their basnets glitter?'
"'Men!' said Amyas in a low voice. 'I trust you all not to shoot till I do. Then give them one arrow, out swords, and at them! Pass the word along.'
"Up they came, slowly, and all hearts beat loud at their coming. First, about twenty soldiers, only one half of whom were on foot; the other half being borne, incredible as it may seem, each in a chair on the back of a single Indian, while those who marched had consigned their heaviest armor and their arquebuses into the hands of attendant slaves, who were each pricked on at will by the pikes of the soldiers behind them.... Last of this troop came some inferior officer also in his chair, who as he went slowly up the hill, with his face turned toward the gang which followed, drew every other second the cigar from his lips to inspirit them with those pious ejaculations ... which earned for the pious Spaniards of the sixteenth century the uncharitable imputation of being the most abominable swearers in Europe.
"... A line of Indians, Negroes, and Zamboes, naked, emaciated, scarred with whips and fetters, and chained together by their left wrists, toiled upwards, panting and perspiring under the burden of a basket held up by a strap which passed across their foreheads. Yeo's sneer was but too just; there were not only old men and youths among them, but women; slender young girls, mothers with children running at their knee; and at the sight, a low murmur of indignation rose from the ambushed Englishmen, worthy of the free and righteous hearts of those days, when Raleigh could appeal to man and God, on the ground of a common humanity, in behalf of the outraged heathens of the New World.
"But the first forty, so Amyas counted, bore on their backs a burden which made all, perhaps, but him and Yeo, forget even the wretches who bore it. Each basket contained a square package of carefully corded hide; the look whereof friend Amyas knew full well.
"'What's in they, Captain?'