ore audacious--the capture of the Panama train.

We have already seen that African slaves had been imported in
considerable numbers; we have now to mention that on the continent they
often escaped into the forest. Here they lived like the Indians, and
were often in friendship with them, going under the name of Simerons, or
afterwards Maroons. Always at enmity with the masters whom they had
deserted, they were a terror to the settlers on account of their
continual raids on the plantations.

Drake determined to get the assistance of these people, which was freely
given, and he was enabled to traverse the pathless forest and to lie in
wait for the train of mules carrying gold and silver from Panama to
Nombre de Dios. This he captured, but, on account of the difficulties
of the way, was obliged to leave the silver behind, and content himself
with the gold. Then he attacked some merchants, burnt their goods to the
value of two hundred thousand ducats, and got safely back to his ships
just as the dilatory Spaniards sent out three hundred men for his
capture. It was on this excursion that he saw the Great South Sea, and
determined to carry English ships into that immense Spanish preserve.
How he carried out his resolve, and appeared suddenly off the Peruvian
coast five years later, is a story we must leave, as it belongs to
another part of the new world.

When Drake returned to Plymouth the news of his adventures, and the more
substantial evidence of the gold he had brought, roused others to follow
his example. Among them was one John Oxnam, or Oxenham, who has been
immortalised by Kingsley in "Westward Ho!" Arriving at the isthmus in
1575, in a vessel of 140 tons, he went to an out-of-the-way river, and
hid his bark among the great trees. Landing with his seventy men, he
went in search of the Simerons, who took him to a river which flowed
into the South Sea, where a pinnace was built. In this the English
pulled down to the Pacific, with the intention of capturing one of the
treasure ships coming to Panama. They succeeded so far as to get sixty
thousand dollars in gold from one bark, and a hundred thousand from
another. Not yet satisfied, they went to the Pearl Islands, attacked the
negro divers, and took a few pearls, with which they at last returned up
the river.

Unfortunately for Oxenham the negroes of the Pearl Islands carried the
news of his presence to Panama, and in two days four boats with a
hundred men were sent