'El Camino Real' - A Path Worn Through Time

by Jenny Barden

This picture sums up what is left of el Camino Real: stones disappearing into the undergrowth, lost in darkness, veiled by forest mist. Very little remains, but what does conjures up the shadows of the pack trains that used to traverse this vital road across Panama, bringing bullion from the mines of South America from the Pacific side of the isthmus to the Caribbean by the quickest overland route. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, el Camino Real, 'the Royal Road', bore the riches that helped sustain the might of the Spanish Empire and its domination in Europe. It stretched from the city of Panama in the south, across mountains and through rainforest, to Nombre de Dios in the north. Over the stones once laid by some 4000 native slaves under the command of Gaspar de Espinosa in 1517-9, pack trains in convoys, often of two or three together totalling some 200 mules or more, would walk, plod, climb and struggle over this path until their hooves wore hollows that can still be seen in places today.

The road was never easy. It was only just over sixty miles in length, yet it passed through thick forest and vegetation that proliferated so rapidly the road was in constant need of repair. In the rainy season it became impassable because of the many rivers that had to be forded which turned into torrents once swollen by tropical storms, and even without rain (as I know only too well from experience) the high humidity would soon leave the clothes of any traveller completely saturated. Those who took the Royal Road had to contend with mosquitoes that carried malaria and yellow fever, and up in the mountains, where drops were precipitous, when a mule lost its footing it would be gone for ever. There were other dangers too: the risk of ambush by Cimaroons - bands of runaway African slaves - and towards the end of the sixteenth century there was the very real threat of pirate attack.

Chris Haslam noted some of the hazards in his article 'The World's Wildest Walk' for the Sunday Times*: 'Some 300ft below, the Nombre de Dios river roars through unseen cataracts, a constant reminder of where you end up if you fall. And falling is a constant possibility. The problem is that if you slip, you need to grab something to stop you falling, and if you grab something it will either bite you, spike you or try to tear your hand off. Scorpions, tarantulas and lethal bullet ants lurk in the leaf litter. Deadly eyelash vipers and enormous fer-de-lances lie disguised as branches and roots, and even the flora threatens armed response. Thorns, hooks and barbs shred clothes and skin, causing wounds that go septic in hours, and peaceful looking leaves cause cruel and unusual burns. It's hard enough hauling a rucksack around here: imagine driving a stolen mule train.'

Francis Drake was the first Englishman to realise the vulnerability of the Spanish bullion supply while it was in transit over the Royal Road, and after several raids along the coast and attacks on shipping for little gain, many setbacks and a thwarted attempt to ambush the 'Silver Train' (as the bullion pack trains were called), he finally achieved a remarkable victory in April 1573 by capturing a convoy carrying almost 30 tons in silver and over half a ton in gold.**

This was Drake's first great enterprise: the triumph that began his meteoric rise to fame, fortune and a place in English history books.

After that attack, the Spanish began to store their treasure at Puerto Bello to the west of Nombre de Dios. (Drake later died of dysentery near Puerto Bello after a failed expedition to raid the City of Panama; he is buried at sea in the bay)
                                                                       
                                                                                 

The Camino Real and its offshoot connecting the Chagres river with the City of Panama: el Camino a Cruces (part of which still survives as Las Cruces Trail) continued to be used to carry bullion north and merchandise south for another two hundred years. In 1671 the buccaneer Henry Morgan used Las Cruces trail to reach the old city of Panama which he then looted and burned to the ground, and in the nineteenth century prospectors used the trail to cross the isthmus on their way to join the gold rush in California. The trail finally came to an end with the construction of the Panama Railroad in 1855. The railway reduced the time needed to cross the isthmus from a minimum of three days, and sometimes several weeks, to only an hour.

With the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 most of the old road was lost forever, flooded by the damming of the Chagres to form Lake Gatun and by the Madden Dam behind which Lake Alajuela now covers a large part of the old trail. The development of Panama City as a metropolis has obliterated much more, and the forest and rivers have swallowed up the rest. There are only a few traces left of the highway that once played such an important part in the history of world affairs, but here is one: the Puente del Matadero in Panama la Vieja - the bridge over which Camino a Cruces began.

If you look under this bridge, you can see the channels worn in the stones by the rush of the tide over nearly five hundred years.


There's a very good website about the Camino Real here: http://www.bruceruiz.net/PanamaHistory/el_camino_real.htm

Michael Turner of the Drake Exploration Society describes the route Drake took to reach both the failed ambush and his successful attack near Nombre de Dios in his book In Drake's Wake: the early Voyages. I gather he's planning another route march across the isthmus this coming February...

My debut novel, Mistress of the Sea, is set against the backdrop of Drake's attack on the Silver Train along the Camino Real. The book will be published by Ebury Press and launched this Thursday, 30 August 2012. It will be released first in hardback with the paperback to follow.

The book is available for pre-order here: http://amzn.to/PUavyS


** There's a piece about how Drake and his men got away with the haul on the EHFA site here: 'Carrying Away the Booty' - Drake's attack on the Spanish 'Silver Train'


* Chris Haslam's article appeared in the Sunday Times 03.09.2006

All pictures taken by the author. Map drawn by the author. ©JennyBarden

'Carrying Away the Booty' - Drake's attack on the Spanish 'Silver Train'

by Jenny Barden

In April 1573 Francis Drake attacked the Spanish 'Silver Train' near Nombre de Dios in Panama; this was the mule train loaded with bullion from Peru en route to King Philip II's treasury in Spain. The attack was a success, a triumph after almost a year of failed attempts in an enterprise that had been beset by disease and misfortune, including the loss of Drake's two younger brothers and over a third of his crew. With the exception of the fatal wounding of Drake's ally, the Huguenot Captain Le Testu, Drake suffered very few casualties and the Spanish put up little resistance. Effectively they ran away, leaving Drake and his motley band of pirates, black runaway slaves (the Cimaroons), and French privateers in possession of the equivalent in gold and silver of about a fifth of Elizabeth I's annual revenue.(*1)

El Camino Real - the Royal Road 

But what to do with so much bullion? This is where the story of Drake's first great enterprise becomes particularly fascinating because he was left with so great a weight in treasure that he and his men could not carry it all away. Historians continue to debate over exactly how much was involved. In Sir Francis Drake Revived, the best English account of the raid (one which Drake presented to Queen Elizabeth in 1593), the weight of silver seized is stated to have been 'near thirty tons'. There were 190 mules in total each carrying the standard load of 300 pounds. But the mules were also carrying much more valuable gold which the Spanish, smarting from the humiliation of the raid and no doubt wishing to play down the loss, put at 'more than 100,000 pesos' including 18,363 pesos of fine gold from Popayan 'consigned to your majesty.'(*2) This weight in gold alone would have been close to half a ton and most of it would have been in the form of unminted gold discs or 'quoits'.

Spanish gold 'quoit'

Drake had fifteen men with him on the raid, including twenty French corsairs and maybe forty Cimaroons. They had attacked the Silver Train about two miles from Nombre de Dios along the Camino Real - the 'Royal Road' by which Spanish bullion was carried from the Pacific to the Caribbean - and their boats had been left 'seven leagues' away at the Rio Francisco (probably the modern-day Rio Cuango twelve miles to the east). Michael Turner of the Drake Exploration Society has done some excellent research in retracing the route they would probably have taken and calculates that the most they could have carried was sixty pounds each.(*3) So of the thirty tons of treasure, Drake's men could only have taken away just over two tons - and they had to march through a storm that night. Imagine what those men must have gone through, burdened with as much as they could possibly carry, sure that the Spanish soldiers from Nombre de Dios would be in hot pursuit, scrambling along a difficult trail, through thick rainforest known only to the Cimaroons, in the dark, lashed by a tropical storm and without any sleep. Then when they arrived back at the Rio Francisco they discovered that the boats which should have been waiting to take them to safety were nowhere to be seen.

San Blas island shore

With typical undaunted panache, Drake improvised a raft out of driftwood left by the storm, with a biscuit sack for a sail, and set off by sea for his ships moored at a hideout in the Cativas (the modern-day San Blas islands), only to come across the pinnaces intended for the getaway at the mainland point (Punta San Blas). The boats had been driven back by the storm, but that night they returned for the rest of Drake's men and the bulk of the booty. What happened to most of the silver which they had been unable to carry? In desperate haste, in the immediate aftermath of the raid, all the treasure that could not be carried had been buried under fallen trees, in the sand and gravel of the shallow islands of the Rio Nombre de Dios, and in the burrows of giant land crabs. A vast number of silver bars, each weighing between 35 and 40 pounds, were simply popped into crab holes. A few days later, a small party of Drake's men returned to the scene of the ambush intent on retrieving this treasure, but they only recovered thirteen bars of silver and a few quoits of gold. The Spanish had found and decapitated Captain Le Testu then tortured one of the two Frenchmen left with him into revealing where the bullion had been hidden. According to the Spanish, all the buried treasure was recovered, but plainly Drake's men were able to find some that they had missed. Perhaps there is more still waiting to be unearthed...


The story of Drake's first great enterprise forms the backdrop to Mistress of the Sea due to be released on 30 August in hardback with the paperback to follow

The book is available for pre-order here: http://amzn.to/PUavyS

'Beautifully written and researched, this tale of desire, revenge, piracy and valour is so evocative we can taste salt on our skin and hear the swoop of sails overhead as we're swept up into a high-stakes adventure unlike any we've read before.' - C.W. Gortner, author of The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

 
References:
*1 John Sugden Sir Francis Drake Pimlico (2006) Ch 6 p 73
*2 Report of the Royal Officials of Panama to the Crown 9 May 1573
*3 Michael Turner In Drake's Wake Paul Mould (2005) Ch5 p150