sor, Sarmiento,
concluded it between the years 1635 and 1641. Fort San Cristobal was
begun in the eighteenth century and completed in 1771. Some
fortifications of less importance were added in the nineteenth
century.

When Caraza reported, in 1555, that the first steps in the
fortification of the capital had been taken, the West Indian seas
swarmed with French privateers, and their depredations on Spanish
commerce and ill-protected possessions continued till Philip II signed
the treaty of peace at Vervins in 1598.

But before that, war with England had been declared, and a more
formidable enemy than the French was soon to appear before the capital
of this much-afflicted island.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 36: The inscription on the upper front wall of the building
is: "During the reign of her Majesty, Dona Isabel II, the Count of
Mirasol being Captain-General, Santos Cortijo, Colonel of Engineers,
reconstructed this royal fort in 1846."]

[Footnote 37: Ducat, a coin struck by a duke, worth, in silver, about
$1.15, in gold, twice as much. It was also a nominal money worth
eleven pesetas and one maravedi.]

CHAPTER XVII

DRAKE'S ATTACK ON SAN JUAN

1595

Of all the English freebooters that preyed upon Spain and her colonies
from the commencement of the war in 1585 to the signing of peace in
1604, Francis Drake was the greatest scourge and the most feared.

Drake early distinguished himself among the fraternity of sea-rovers
by the boldness of his enterprises and the intensity of his hatred of
the Spaniards. When still a young man, in 1567-'68, he was captain of
a small ship, the Judith, one of a fleet of slavers running between
the coast of Africa and the West Indies, under the command of John
Hawkyns, another famous freebooter. In the harbor of San Juan de Ulua
the Spaniards took the fleet by stratagem; the Judith and the Minion,
with Hawkyns on board, being the only vessels that escaped. Young
Drake's experiences on that occasion fixed the character of his
relations to the Dons forever afterward. He vowed that they should pay
for all he had suffered and all he had lost.

At that time the Spaniards were ostensibly still friends with England.
To Drake they were then and always treacherous and forsworn enemies.
In 1570 he made a voyage to the West Indies in a bark of forty tons
with a private crew. In the Chagres River, on the coast of Nombre de
Dios, there happened to be sundry barks transporting velvet