r was granted to him, for in five years' time he was
off that very coast with such a spoil as no ship ever took before.
Having glutted his eyes with the sight, Drake called up all his English
followers, and "acquainted John Oxenham especially with this his
petition and purpose, if it would please God to grant him that
happiness." Oxenham answered fervently that "unless our Captain did beat
him from his company, he would follow him, by God's grace." He fulfilled
his vow a few months later, with disaster to himself and his associates.

"Thoroughly satisfied with the sight of the seas," the men descended to
their dinner with excellent appetite. They then pushed on lightly as
before, through continual forest, for another two days. On the 13th of
February, when they had gained the west side of the Cheapo River, the
forest broke away into little knots of trees green and goodly, which
showed like islands in a rolling ocean of green grass. They were come to
the famous savannahs, over which roamed herds of black cattle, swift and
savage. Everywhere about them was the wiry stipa grass, and "a kind of
grass with a stalk as big as a great wheaten reed, which hath a blade
issuing from the top of it, on which though the cattle feed, yet it
groweth every day higher, until the top be too high for an ox to reach."
The inhabitants of the country were wont to burn the grass every year,
but "after it is thus burnt" it "springeth up fresh like green corn"
within three days. "Such," says the narrative, "is the great
fruitfulness of the soil: by reason of the evenness of the day and the
night, and the rich dews which fall every morning." As the raiders
advanced along this glorious grass-land they sometimes caught sight of
Panama. Whenever they topped a rise they could see the city, though
very far away; and at last, "on the last day," they saw the ships riding
in the road, with the blue Pacific trembling away into the sky beyond
them. Now was the woodcock near the gin, and now the raiders had to
watch their steps. There was no cover on those rolling sweeps of grass.
They were within a day's journey of the city. The grass-land (as Drake
gathered from his guides) was a favourite hunting-ground of the city
poulterers, for there, as Drake puts it, "the Dames of Panama are wont
to send forth hunters and fowlers, for taking of sundry dainty fowl,
which the land yieldeth." Such a body of men as theirs might readily be
detected by one of these sportsm