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Captain Rause was angry that the raid had not been more successful, and felt that it was useless to stay longer in those seas, now that the Spaniards knew that they were on the coast. He waited till the pinnaces returned from Chagres River, as some of his hands were in them; but as soon as they arrived he parted company, after dissolving partnership with Drake.
These were a sort of dug-out with small decks in the bow and in the stern, and with low roofs of palmetto leaves amidships. The fare to Cruces was about fifteen dollars a man. Nobody was in a hurry but the Americans. Chagres was a collection of cane huts on level ground, with a swamp at the back. Men and women clad in a single cotton garment lay about smoking cigars.
1521 Charles the Fifth of Spain orders a Royal Road constructed across the Isthmus between Nombre de Dios on the Atlantic side and Panama on the Pacific side. It crossed the Chagres River at Las Cruces. 1530 Vessels begin to navigate the Chagres up to Gorgona and Cruces, and there connect with the Royal Road from Panama.
The difference in the tides of the two oceans, 9 inches in either direction from the mean in the Atlantic and from 9 to 11 feet from the same datum in the Pacific, was to be overcome and the final currents reduced by a proper sloping of the bottom of the Pacific portion of the Canal. No provisions were made for the control of the Chagres River.
Not even a connecting link has been discovered; but the Atlantic coast of Central America is hardly explored, much less examined. In my time it was held, from Cape Camarin to Chagres, by independent tribes of savages not independent in fact alone, but in name also.
It was Morgan's intention to return to the island after sacking Panama, and to leave there a strong garrison to hold it in the interests of the buccaneers. When he had made these preparations he weighed his anchors, and sailed for the Chagres River under the English colours. Eight days later they came sailing slowly up towards the river's mouth.
From Gorgona the train returned crab-wise through Matachin and across the sand dyke that still holds the Chagres out of the "cut," and halted at Gamboa cabin. Day was dying as we rumbled on across the iron bridge above the river and away into the fresh jungle night along the rock-ballasted "relocation."
And how unjust all our suspicions were Joe's and mine. I wonder what he really did think he was up to, anyhow?" The next day Blake and Joe were busy making many important views of the big dam, which held back the waters of the Chagres River, creating Gatun Lake. The Spaniard, too, was busy with his preparations for leaving.
The morning "touch" with headquarters over, therefore, I scrambled away across the silent yawning locks and the trainless and workless dam to the Spillway, over which already some overflow from the lake was escaping to the Caribbean. My friends "Dusty" and H had carried their canoe to the Chagres below, and before nine we were off down the river.
Most of the Spaniards flung themselves from the castle walls into the river or upon the rocks beneath, preferring death to capture and possible torture; many who were left were put to the sword, and some few were spared and held as prisoners. So fell the castle of Chagres, and nothing now lay between the buccaneers and the city of Panama but the intervening and trackless forests.
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