He
had procured no gold; all that he had won for himself was the enmity of
Spain, which, in the end, through the instrumentality of King James I.,
cost him his head. So much for some of the most important of the early
English adventurers in the seas which the Spaniards claimed as their
own.
To refer to the whole company of notable buccaneers in detail is
impossible, although so many others, from Cavendish to Sharpe, Davis,
Knight, and the rest, are worthy of note. There were, moreover, the
Dutch freebooters, such as Van Noorte, de Werte, Spilsbergen, and
others, as Jaques l'Ermite, Francois l'Ollonais, and Bartolomew
Portugues, who ransacked and burned every town which failed to resist
their fierce onslaughts, from the Gulf of Darien in the north all round
the coast to the Pacific Ocean on the west.
CHAPTER X
FOREIGN RAIDS ON PORTUGUESE COLONIES
The rivalry which had existed between the Portuguese and the French in
the early days of Brazilian colonization has already been referred to.
With this exception, the first era of the Colony of Brazil was
comparatively peaceful--that is to say, the Portuguese, proving
themselves of a more liberal temperament than the Spaniards, did not
suffer from the fierce aggressions of the English and the Dutch to the
same extent as did their Castilian neighbours.
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