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 in Hakluyt. It is also mentioned (but very curtly) in Herrera's History, in Dampier's Voyages, and in the account left by Champlain after his short visit to Panama. I know of no plan or picture of the place. The drawing reproduced here, from Schenk's "Hecatompolis," is purely imaginary, however pretty. For my remarks on "Cruces," or Venta Cruz, I am indebted to friends who have lived many years in Panama, and to an interesting article in _The Geographical Journal_ (December-July 1903, p. 325), by Colonel G. E. Church, M. Am. Soc. C.E. CHAPTER II THE ATTACK ON NOMBRE DE DIOS The treasure of the Indies--The Bastimentos--A Spanish herald