from the salt mines of Araya, the ingenious
scheme of poisoning the salt. This advice, it seems, was not followed,
but a few years later, in 1605, a Spanish fleet of fourteen galleons
sent from Lisbon surprised and burnt nineteen Dutch vessels found
loading salt at Araya, and murdered most of the prisoners.[73] In
December 1604 the Venetian ambassador in London wrote of "news that the
Spanish in the West Indies captured two English vessels, cut off the
hands, feet, noses and ears of the crews and smeared them with honey and
tied them to trees to be tortured by flies and other insects. The
Spanish here plead," he continued, "that they were pirates, not
merchants, and that they did not know of the peace. But the barbarity
makes people here cry out."[74] On 22nd June 1606, Edmondes, the English
Ambassador at Brussels, in a letter to Cornwallis, speaks of a London
ship which was sent to trade in Virginia, and putting into a river in
Florida to obtain water, was surprised there by Spanish vessels from
Havana, the men ill-treated and the cargo confiscated.[75] And it was
but shortly after that Captain Chaloner's ship on its way to Virginia
was seized by the Spaniards in the West Indies, and the crew sent to
languish in the dungeons of Seville or condemned to the galleys.

By attacks upon some of the English settlements, too, the Spaniards gave
their threats a more effective form. Frequent raids were made upon the
English and Dutch plantations in Guiana;[76] and on 8th-18th September
1629 a Spanish fleet of over thirty sail, commanded by Don Federico de
Toledo, nearly annihilated the joint French and English colony on St.
Kitts. Nine English ships were captured and the settlements burnt. The
French inhabitants temporarily evacuated the island and sailed for
Antigua; but of the English some 550 were carried to Cartagena and
Havana, whence they were shipped to England, and all the rest fled to
the mountains and woods.[77] Within three months' time, however, after
the departure of the Spaniards, the scattered settlers had returned and
re-established the colony. Providence Island and its neighbour,
Henrietta, being situated near the Mosquito Coast, were peculiarly
exposed to Spanish attack;[78] while near the north shore of Hispaniola
the island of Tortuga, which was colonized by the same English company,
suffered repeatedly from the assaults of its hostile neighbours. In July
1635 a Spanish fleet from the Main assailed the island