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 IXTY years after Balboa's discovery of the Pacific, the first Englishman to see that ocean looked at it from the top of a "goodlie and great high tree," somewhere in the jungle back of Old Panama. This man was Francis Drake, a bold sea-captain of Devon, who had come to the Isthmus to pay a debt he had long owed the Spaniards: a debt of revenge for treacherous wrong.

Five years before, in 1568, an English fleet under Sir John Hawkins had entered the harbor of San Juan de Ulloa (now Vera Cruz), in Mexico, ready either to trade peacefully with the Spaniards, or, if the latter preferred, to fight. The Spaniards received them as friends, exchanged hostages as evidence of good faith, waited until a very much larger Spanish fleet had come in, and then suddenly attacked the English with both ships and forts. After an all-day's fight, every English ship but two was captured, sunk, or ablaze; but the Minion of Hawkins, and Francis Drake's Judith fought their way out and carried the news to England. Queen Elizabeth could not go to war with Spain, then the mightiest power on earth, but she winked her royal eye at the private acts of her seamen.

Drake first made two quiet voyages to the Isthmus, to learn how the Spaniards handled the treasure-trade from Rh