Amid the ruin
of massacre in Mexico, Drake brought away one fact--memory of Spanish
gold to the value of one million eight hundred thousand pounds. Where
did it come from? Was the secret of that gold the true reason for
Spain's resentment against all intruders? Drake had coasted Florida
and the West Indies. He knew they yielded no such harvest. Then it
must come from one of three other regions--South America, Central
America, Mexico.
For two years Drake prospected for the sources of that golden wealth.
In the _Dragon_ and _Swan_, he cruised the Spanish Main during 1570.
In 1571 he was out again in the _Swan_. By 1572 he knew the secret of
that gold--gold in ship-loads, in caravans of one thousand mules, in
masses that filled from cellar to attic of the King's Treasure House,
where tribute of one-fifth was collected for royalty. It came from the
subjugated Kingdom of Peru, by boat up the Pacific to the Port of
Panama, by pack-train across the isthmus--mountainous, rugged, forests
of mangroves tangled with vines, bogs that were bottomless--to Nombre
de Dios, the Spanish fort on the Atlantic side, which had become the
storehouse of all New Spain.
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