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The towne walles being then possessed, and the English Ensigne being there displayed vpon them, with all speede possible they proceeded on to march through the towne, making still their waie with sworde and shot as well as they could, being still fought withall at euery turne.
I don't know what he would have thought had he been in my case, with his matchless "steede" dead, and in the pangs of thirst himself, his "sworde of metal keane" a useless encumbrance, 168 miles from the last water, and not knowing where the next might be; he would have to admit that the wonderful beasts which now alone remained to us were by no means to be accounted "meane," for these patient and enduring creatures, which were still alive, had tasted no water since leaving Wynbring, and, though the horses were dead and gone, stood up with undiminished powers appearing to be as well able now to continue on and traverse this wide-spread desert as when they left the last oasis behind.
The celebrated Sir Thomas Mitchell, one of Australia's early explorers, in one of his journeys, after finding a magnificent country watered by large rivers, and now the long-settled abodes of civilisation, mounted on a splendid horse, bursts into an old cavalier song, a verse of which says: "A steede, a steede of matchless speede, A sworde of metal keane; All else to noble mindes is drosse; All else on earthe is meane."
The second of Iuly 1599. wee were forbidden by sounde of the drum that no man should go beyond the forelorne sentenell placed on the Mountaines: and to sende backe againe into the hilles all such Spaniardes which came with a flag of truce, to speake with the Generall, and to put all such to the sworde as came with weapons.
"His father's empire and government was but as the Poeticall Furie in a Stageaction, compleat, yet with horrid and wofull Tragedies: a first, but no second to any Hamlet; and that now Reuenge, iust Reuenge was coming with his Sworde drawne against him, his royall Mother, and dearest Sister to fill up those Murdering Sceanes." Sir Thomas Smithe's Voiage and Entertainment in Rushia, 1605.
They laied wagers with suche as with one thruste of a sworde, woulde paunche or bowell a man in the middest, or with one blowe of a sworde most readily and moste deliverly cut of his heade, or that woulde best perce his entralls at one stroke. They tooke the little soules by the heeles, rampinge them from their mothers brestes, and crusshed their heades against the cliftes.
Others they caste into the rivers, laughinge and mockinge; and when they tombled into the water, they saied: Nowe shifte for thy selfe suche a one’s corps. They put others, together with their mothers, and all that they mett, to the edge of the sworde.
In token and remembrance whereof, vpon our earnest request to the same Iohn Fox, he hath left here an olde sworde, wherewith he slewe the keeper of the prison: which sword we doe as a monument and memoriall of so worthy a deede, hang vp in the chiefe place of our Couent house.
Wherefore two of the chiefest of our Englishmen went gladly to them: but whilest one of those Sauages traiterously imbraced one of our men, the other with his sworde of wood, which he had secretly hidden vnder his mantell, strooke him on the heade and slew him, and presently the other eight and twentie Sauages shewed them selues: the other Englishman perceiuing this, fled to his company, whom the Sauages pursued with their bowes, and arrowes, so fast, that the Englishmen were forced to take the house, wherein all their victuall, and weapons were: but the Sauages foorthwith set the same on fire: by meanes wherof our men were forced to take vp such weapons as came first to hand, and without order to runne forth among the Sauages, with whom they skirmished aboue an howre.
It would be as well to refer briefly to the careers in South America of a certain number of the most notable of these early adventurers. One of the first was Sir John Hawkins, who set out in 1562 with three ships: the Salomon, the Swallow, and the Jonas. Having touched at Teneriffe, he then landed at Sierra Leone, "where by the sworde and other means" he obtained some 300 negroes.
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