ed the Indians lodged when engaged upon their
fishery. Having filled the casks, and stowed them aboard again, the
ships weighed anchor, and sailed away south towards the mainland. On the
fifth day, keeping well to seaward, thirty miles from the shore, to
avoid discovery, they made the high land of Santa Martha on "the Terra
Firma." Having made the landfall they sailed westward into the Gulf of
Darien, and in six days more (during two of which the ships were
becalmed) they came to a secret anchorage which Drake had discovered in
his former voyage. He had named it Port Pheasant, "by reason of the
great store of those goodly fowls which he and his Company did then
dayly kill and feed on in that place." "It was a fine round Bay, of very
safe harbour for all winds, lying between two high points, not past half
a cable's length (or a hundred yards) over at the mouth, but within
eight or ten cables' length every way, having ten or twelve fadome
water, more or lesse, full of good fish, the soile also very fruitfull."
Drake had been there "within a year and few days before," and had left
the shore clear of tangle, with alleys and paths by which men might walk
in the woods, after goodly fowls or otherwise; but a year of that
steaming climate had spoiled his handiwork. The tangle of many-blossomed
creepers and succulent green grasses had spread across the paths "as
that we doubted at first whether this were the same place or no." We do
not know where this romantic harbour lies, for the Gulf of Darien is
still unsurveyed. We know only that it is somewhere nearly equidistant
from Santiago de Tolu (to the east) and Nombre de Dios (to the west).
Roughly speaking, it was 120 miles from either place, so that "there
dwelt no Spaniards within thirty-five leagues." Before the anchors were
down, and the sails furled Drake ordered out the boat, intending to go
ashore. As they neared the landing-place they spied a smoke in the
woods--a smoke too big to come from an Indian's fire. Drake ordered
another boat to be manned with musketeers and bowmen, suspecting that
the Spaniards had found the place, and that the landing would be
disputed. On beaching the boats they discovered "evident markes" that a
Plymouth ship, under the command of one John Garret, had been there but
a day or two before. He had left a plate of lead, of the sort supplied
to ships to nail across shot-holes, "nailed fast to a mighty great
tree," some thirty feet in girth. On the le