On one of these expeditions, Drake landed on the Isthmus of Panama, or Darien, as it was then called. Some of the natives showed him the way across to the South Sea, or the Pacific Ocean, as Magellan had named it, and when they had ascended a mountain about half-way across, Drake climbed a tall tree from which he gazed upon the broad, unexplored ocean. “May God give me leave and life to sail that sea but once!” murmured Captain Drake to his companions. But Queen Elizabeth had heard of the terror of the Spaniards and ordered him to stop, lest he plunge her kingdom into a Spanish war before England was ready. So for a while Francis Drake stayed at home and suffered because he was not allowed to fight with the Spaniards. About five years after his first sight of the Pacific, Captain Drake sailed away from England in command of a fleet of five vessels of which the flagship was the _Golden Hind_. The object of the voyage was a secret. This was about sixty years after Magellan, the Portuguese master-sailor, had discovered and passed through the straits named for him. It took five months for the fleet to reach the eastern coast of South America. In due time they found and passed through the Straits of Magellan; but the ocean beyond was more terrific than Pacific, for a fierce storm drove the _Golden Hind_ even farther south than Tierra del Fuego, so that Drake was first to land at Cape Horn, the southern-most point of South America. At the place where the waters of the Atlantic meet those of the Pacific, Drake lay down and embraced the sharp point of rock and exclaimed: “I am the only man in the world who has ever been so far south!” All the ships in Drake’s fleet but the _Golden Hind_ had either been sunk, broken, or scattered. Now at last he had “leave and life to sail that sea but once”--with one ship alone. The undaunted hero sailed up the western coast of South America to capture treasure from the gold mines of Peru. When he came near Valparaiso, some Spaniards in a ship saw the _Golden Hind_ approach. Never dreaming that an English ship could be in that ocean, they were astonished to see a gun presented through a porthole and to hear an English voice calling on them roughly to surrender. So they stared and cursed under their breath while “the master thief of the western world” took charge of their ship with sixty thousand gold pesos, jewels, merchandise, and a stock of wine. When the people of Valparaiso heard that the dreadful Drake was in their harbor, they fled from the city. The little English crew entered the town, and stocked up with bread, bacon, and wine, which they enjoyed to the full after many months of famishing. In a day or two the _Golden Hind_ sailed away northward toward Peru.