INDIAN HUTS NEAR PORTO BELLO
On this annual fair, and on trade with the back country, both Nombre de Dios and Porto Bello waxed prosperous and luxurious. Prosperity was a dangerous quality for a town or a man to exhibit in those days when monarchs set the example of theft and extortion, and private plunderers were quick to follow it. So Nombre de Dios was early made the point of an audacious raid by Sir Francis Drake. Though Drake was a bold adventurer, he is given a measure of immortality by a statue in Baden, the inscription on which celebrates him as the introducer of potatoes into Europe. But personal profit, not potatoes, had his chief attention, though as a side issue he engaged in the slave trade. July 29, 1572, he made a descent upon Nombre de Dios with 73 men armed, according to a writer of the time, with “6 Targets; 6 Fire Pikes; 12 Pikes; 24 Muskets and Callivers; 16 Bowes and 6 Partizans; 2 Drums and 2 Trumpets.” His men landed from pinnaces and after encountering “a jolly hot volley of shot” in the plaza put the Spaniards to flight. At the point of a sword a captive was forced to lead the raiders to the Governor’s house where to his joy Drake discovered a stack of silver ingots worth a million pounds sterling. But ’twas an embarrassment of riches, for the bars were of 40 pounds weight each and therefore hard to move, so Drake sought the King’s Treasure House where he hoped to find more movable wealth. As the door was being broken down he fainted from loss of blood, and as he lay speechless on the sill the Spaniards rallied and attacked the invaders. Though Drake reviving sought to hold his men up to the fight, they had lost their dash, and despite his protestations carried him bodily to the boats. The men were wiser than their leader because it was the chance arrival of some soldiers from Panama that had rallied the populace of the town, and the English, deprived of Drake’s leadership, would certainly have been overwhelmed. That leader however grieved sincerely when a Spanish spy told him later that there were 360 tons of silver in the town and many chests of gold in the treasure house.
COUNTRY BACK OF PORTO BELLO
NATIVE WOMEN OF THE SAVANNAS BEARING BURDENS
With his appetite whetted for treasure Drake retired to plan a more profitable raid. This was to be nothing less than a land expedition to cut off one of the treasure caravans just outside of old Panama on its way down the Nombre de Dios trail. Had the Indian population been as hostile to the English then as they became in later days this would have been a more perilous task. But at this time the men who lurked in the jungles, or hunted on the broad savannas had one beast of prey they feared and hated more than the lion or the boa—the Spaniard. Whether Indian or Cimmaroon—as the escaped slaves were called—every man out in that tropic wilderness had some good ground for hating the Spaniards, and so when Drake and his men came, professing themselves enemies of the Spaniards likewise, the country folk made no war upon them but aided them to creep down almost within sight of Panama. Halting here, at a point which must have been well within the Canal Zone and which it seems probable was near the spot where the Pedro Miguel locks now rise, they sent a spy into the town who soon brought back information as to the time when the first mule-train would come out.
All seemed easy then. Most of the travel across the isthmus was by night to avoid the heat of the day. Drake disposed his men by the side of the trail—two Indians or Cimmaroons to each armored Englishman. The latter had put their shirts on outside of their breastplates so that they might be told in the dark by the white cloth—for the ancient chroniclers would have us believe them punctilious about their laundry work. All were to lie silent in the jungle until the train had passed, then closing in behind cut off all retreat to Panama—when ho! for the fat panniers crammed with gold and precious stones!
