The Spanish Galleons
I
Have you ever read the voyages and adventures of the handsome young Amyas Leigh, who sailed the Spanish Main with the Seawolf, Sir Francis Drake? Have you read of Ayacanora the Indian Princess with the blowgun, of Salvation Yeo, of the lost Rose of Devon, of the old Mono of Panama, and how Amyas and his fellows seized a gold pack-train and captured a Spanish Treasure-Galleon?
One of the most thrilling tales of adventure, of Spanish Gold and Spanish Galleons, is “Westward Ho!” the story of Amyas Leigh. But before the days of Amyas, Knight of Devon, and of the English Seawolves, the Spanish Treasure Ships began to sail upon the Spanish Main.
These Galleons were like huge floating castles, and were manned by armed Spaniards. They were filled with bars of glittering gold and silver and with other treasure of the New World.
For after Columbus’s discovery, there had come to the New World, greedy pearl-seekers and even greedier gold-hunters and slave-traders. They exploited the mines and pearl-fisheries, and, capturing thousands of helpless Indians, sold them to Spanish masters, to do all kinds of hard labour.
Thus Spanish America became a vast treasure-house for the Spanish Crown. Pack-trains of Indian and negro slaves and mules under guard, carrying bullion, gems, fragrant spices, and costly woods, toiled along the steep and narrow trails of the Andes, or threaded the dangerous mountain-passes. These miserable slaves, groaning under their heavy burdens, cringed beneath the lashes of their drivers’ whips. They shivered in the piercing cold of the high mountains, and panted from tropic heat, as the pack-trains wound their way across the Isthmus of Panama to the Atlantic side.
There the great Galleons took aboard the gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, spices, and woods, as well as cargoes of slaves, then sailed away with them across the Spanish Main.
But gold breeds robbers. And along the coast and on the Caribbean Sea, swarmed pirate ships waiting to swoop down upon the Galleons. Oftentimes, buccaneers grappled with the Treasure-Ships, putting the Spaniards to the knife, and carrying off the booty to their pirate-islands. So not every Galleon came safely to its Spanish port.
II
And in order that this stupendous wealth of the West Indies and of Tierra Firme, as South America was then called, should belong to no country but herself, Spain sent out Governors to rule with iron hand her Spanish-American Colonies. For the Spanish Crown had Colonies in South America, just as England had in North America. In South America were many important cities and towns.
These Governors were, for the most part, gold-grasping officials. They oppressed the Creoles, as the native-born Americans of pure Spanish blood were called. And besides the Creoles, there were in Spanish America, Indians, negro-slaves, and people of mixed blood, all subjects of the Crown.
Laws were enforced taxing the People heavily, closing their ports to foreign trade, and forbidding them to manufacture commodities which Spain herself wished to make and sell to the Colonists at exorbitant prices.
Not even the rich Creoles were allowed to travel abroad without permission from the Crown. When in Spain they were treated with contempt. Their education was limited, higher education is not for Americans, decreed the Spanish King. And they might not read books forbidden by Spain. And at that time, the Roman Catholic Church was exercising its power in Spanish America, in much the same fashion as the Established Church of England was misusing its function at the time of the Pilgrim Fathers, Roger Williams, and William Penn.
If any of the Colonists raised their voices in protest, their property was confiscated, and they were arrested. The slightest rebellion was mercilessly punished. Many of the captured rebels were either flung into filthy dungeons to die or were executed.
Large numbers of Indians, negroes and people of mixed blood, perished miserably in the mines and on the plantations, or while deep-sea diving for pearls,—all this to fill the Spanish Galleons with treasure.
III
Then came the Liberators, facing death or cruel imprisonment. But they were strengthened by the justice of their cause, and by the fact that the United States of America had succeeded in separating from her Mother Country, and had established a Republic in which the citizens, rich and poor alike, had a voice in their own government.
It is the story of some of these Liberators that is told here, the Washingtons and Lincolns of their native lands, who freed their countrymen from the curse of the Spanish Treasure-Ships, and who established the Latin American Republics.