s of them have long since
disappeared. Dampier (writing of the year 1682) says that: "I have lain
ashore in the place where that City stood; but it is all overgrown with
Wood; so as toe leave noe sign that any Town hath been there." A thick
green cane brake has overgrown the Plaza. The battery has crumbled away.
The church bell which made such a clatter has long since ceased to
sound. The latest Admiralty Chart ignores the place.

[Illustration: NOMBRE DE DIOS]

The Cimmeroons frequently attacked the city while it was in occupation.
Once they captured and destroyed it.

Drake visited the town a second time in 1595. It was then a "bigge"
town, having large streets and "houses very hie, all built of timber,"
"one church very faire," and "a show in their shops of great store of
merchandises that had been there."[1] There was a mill above the town,
and a little watch-house "upon the top of another hill in the woods." To
the east there was a fresh river "with houses, and all about it
gardens." The native quarter was some miles away in the woods. Drake
burned the town, a deed which caused the inhabitants to migrate to Porto
Bello. It was at Nombre de Dios that Drake contracted the flux of which
he died. The town witnessed his first triumph and final discomfiture.

[Footnote 1: This was eleven years after the royal mandate ordering the
transference of the main trade of the place to Porto Bello. Perhaps the
town retained much of the trade, in spite of the mandate, as the
transference involved the making of a new mule track across the bogs and
crags between Venta Cruz and Porto Bello. Such a track would have taken
several years to lay.]

_Note._--The authorities for this and the following chapters are:

1. "Sir Francis Drake Reviv'd" (first published in 1626), by Philip
Nichols, Preacher, helped, no doubt, by Drake himself and some of
his company. 2. The scanty notice of the raid given in Hakluyt. 3.
The story of Lopez Vaz, a Portuguese, also in Hakluyt.

For the description of Nombre de Dios I have trusted to the account
of Drake's last voyage printed in Hakluyt, vol. iii. p. 587. In the
same collection there is a translation from a very interesting
report by a Spanish commissioner to the King of Spain. This paper
gives reasons for the transference of the town to Porto Bello. One
or two Ruttiers, or Mariner's Guides, make mention of the port, and
of these the best is given