The Incas possessed great stores of gold, which they used to make household vessels for the princes and for religious purposes, and the Spaniards possessed themselves of this gold. Much of it was sent down to the coast for shipment to Spain, to fill the needy coffers of the Spanish sovereigns. Some of it fell into the clutches of Drake and other enterprising adventurers into these realms of gold, who disputed the Spanish monopoly of the New World. Let us imagine, as we pace the deck of the steamer and look over towards the setting sun, touching the bosom of the broad Pacific, an early scene upon these waters. Here is Drake's ship, _Golden Hind_ or _Pelican_, blowing out of Callao with every stitch of canvas set. Drake has heard that a Plate ship, laden with gold and silver, has just set sail for Panama, and he is chagrined at having missed it. The Spaniards had feared no danger. As far as they had known there were no craft in these waters save those which flew the colours of Spain. But now the viceroy of Lima, Don Francisco de Toledo, is uneasy. The, to him, unspeakable Drake--"_Caramba!_ Draco, a Dragon"--is about! The English ship overhauls the plate ship. But the wind drops and she is still hull down, many a mile of heaving sea between. Shall they lose the prize? No; the boats are put out, and for three days the men of Devon towed their vessel, straining at their oars as British seamen will, and the sluggish Plate ship rises more upon their horizon. Away they toil, past the river of Guayaquil, above which the gleaming Chimborazo rears his distant head, until, six hundred miles to spare from the haven of Panama, she is overtaken, off Cape San Francisco, in what is now Ecuador. They board the ship and seize the treasure, which, according to the Spanish chroniclers, amounted to nearly a million pounds sterling. The viceroy did not altogether lose hope of recovering this treasure. He prepared a veritable hornets' nest for Drake, in the form of an armada, which was ordered to wait at the Strait of Magellan, which, he imagined, Drake must pass in order to get home. But Drake was not thus to be entrapped. He sailed on northwards--trying for a strait eastward through America--reaching the spot known now as Drake's Bay, in California; found, of course, no passage; careened his ship, cleaned it, and turning his prow westward, sailed across the Pacific, going completely round the world for England, where he was worthily knighted by Queen Elizabeth on the quarter-deck of his wave-worn ship.