Page:Panama-past-present-Bishop.djvu/96

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76
Panama Past and Present

land-crabs, and it is said that the Spaniards were never able to find it, and that it must be there to-day. As for the gold, Drake divided it fairly, and sailed back to England with his share.

Two years later, in 1575, John Oxenham returned to the Isthmus, crossed it with the aid of the Cimaroons, built and launched a pinnace on the southern side, and

SAN BLAS INDIAN SQUAWS IN NATIVE DRESS.
Note the gold nose-rings.

was the first Englishman to sail the Pacific. How he raided the Pearl Islands and was captured and put to death by the Spaniards from Panama, you can read best in Kingsley's noble story of "Westward Ho!"

It was left for Drake to enter this sea that Spain had claimed for her own, through the strait Magellan had found in 1520, and to be the next after him to sail round the world. How, with one little ship, the Golden Hind, Drake swept the west coast of South America, and took the great treasure-galleon Cacafuego a hundred and fifty leagues from Panama; how with a fleet he took and burned the city of Santo Domingo (but spared the cathedral because it held the ashes of Christopher Columbus),