r that farther west, among the Catives.
Here he went ashore, and made friends with the Maroons, some of whom, no
doubt, were old acquaintances, still gay with beads or iron-work which
he had given them two years before. They told him that the treasure
trains "from Panama to Nombre de Dios" were now strongly guarded by
Spanish soldiers, so that he might not hope to win such a golden booty
as Drake had won, by holding up a recua on the march. Oxenham,
therefore, determined "to do that which never any man before
enterprised"--by leaving his ship, marching over the watershed, building
a pinnace in the woods, and going for a cruise on the South Sea. He
dragged his ship far into the haven, struck her topmasts, and left her
among the trees, beached on the mud, and covered with green boughs so as
to be hidden from view. Her great guns were swung ashore, and buried,
and the graves of them strewn with leaves and brushwood. He then armed
his men with their calivers and their sacks of victual, "and so went
with the Negroes," dragging with them two small guns, probably
quick-firing guns, mounted on staves of wood or iron. Hawkins says that
he left four or five men behind him as shipkeepers. After a march of
"about twelve leagues into the maine-land" the Maroons brought him to a
river "that goeth to the South Sea." Here the party halted, and built
themselves little huts of boughs to live in while they made themselves a
ship.

They cut down some trees here, and built themselves a pinnace "which was
five and fortie foot by the keele." They seem to have brought their
sails and tackling with them, but had they not done so they could have
made shift with the rough Indian cloth and the fibrous, easily twisted
bark of the maho-tree. Having built this little ship, they went aboard
of her, and dropped downstream to the Pacific--the first English crew,
but not the first Englishman, to sail those waters. Six negroes came
with them to act as guides. As soon as they had sailed out of the
river's mouth, they made for the Pearl Islands, or Islands of the King,
"which is five and twentie leagues from Panama." Here they lay very
close, in some snug inlet hidden from the sea. Some of them went inland
to a rocky cliff, to watch the seas for ships coming northward from Peru
with treasure from the gold and silver mines. The islands are in the
fairway between Panama and Lima, but ten days passed before the watchers
saw a sail, and cried out to those in th