THE HAND OF THE GIANT 235 



Spain began in earnest; the professionals were taking over. 

 Even when France and Spain made peace by the Treaty of 

 Vervins at the end of the century the territory south of the 

 Tropic of Cancer was left out of bounds — anything went 

 ''below the line/' 



From Hawkins on through Drake and Morgan, the English- 

 men attacking the Spanish domain knew just what they were 

 after. The French on the whole even when operating ''below 

 the line/' were a good deal more scrupulous of European 

 treaty agreements than the British. Le Clerc, who was hon- 

 ored by the French king with a patent of nobility, seldom 

 attacked in the Caribbean when France and Spain were at 

 peace in Europe. Drake and his associates were not so punc- 

 tilious. To illustrate the wealth pouring into Europe from the 

 Spanish Main at the end of the sixteenth century, a contem- 

 porary letter written in 1580 describes Drake's loot as worth 

 two million ducats. But another Fugger News Letter of the 

 same period totals the wealth that still reached Spanish ports 

 at close to twenty million ducats. Later in 1628 Piet Heyn, 

 with 31 ships, 700 cannon, and a force of 3,000 men, captured 

 the Spanish plate fleet near Cuba and returned 15 million 

 guilders to the investors of the Dutch West Indian Company, 

 which declared a fifty percent dividend. 



Gold, glossed by romance or stated in terms of plain greed, 

 called the tune in the Caribbean. The myth of El Dorado, 

 the Golden Man, caught and held European imaginations. 

 It originated in the practice of a Chibcha chief in the high- 

 lands of Colombia in dusting gold on his body and then cere- 

 moniously washing it off in a lake. The alchemy of distance, 

 strangeness, mystery, and greed soon created somewhere in 

 the hinterland of the Andes, a golden kingdom shining with 

 precious metal and alive with emeralds. The career of Sir 

 Walter Raleigh is the story of the grip of this golden legend. 

 By his time the country of El Dorado was called "Manoa," 



