Drake climbed the tree with Pedro to the little sunny bower at the top. A fresh breeze which was blowing, had blown away the mists and the heat haze, so that the whole isthmus lay exposed before him, in the golden sunlight. There to the north, like a bright blue jewel, was "the Atlantic Ocean whence now we came." There to the south, some thirty miles away, was "that sea of which he had heard such golden reports." He looked at the wonderful South Sea, and "besought Almighty God of His goodness, to give him life and leave to sail once in an English ship, in that sea." The prayer was granted to him, for in five years' time he was off that very coast with such a spoil as no ship ever took before. Having glutted his eyes with the sight, Drake called up all his English followers, and "acquainted John Oxenham especially with this his petition and purpose, if it would please God to grant him that happiness." Oxenham answered fervently that "unless our Captain did beat him from his company, he would follow him, by God's grace." He fulfilled his vow a few months later, with disaster to himself and his associates.
"Thoroughly satisfied with the sight of the seas," the men descended to their dinner with excellent appetite. They then pushed on lightly as before, through continual forest, for another two days. On the 13th of February, when they had gained the west side of the Cheapo River, the forest broke away into little knots of trees green and goodly, which showed like islands in a rolling ocean of green grass. They were come to the famous savannahs, over which roamed herds of black cattle, swift and savage. Everywhere about them was the wiry stipa grass, and "a kind of grass with a stalk as big as a great wheaten reed, which hath a blade issuing from the top of it, on which though the cattle feed, yet it groweth every day higher, until the top be too high for an ox to reach." The inhabitants of the country were wont to burn the grass every year, but "after it is thus burnt" it "springeth up fresh like green corn" within three days. "Such," says the narrative, "is the great fruitfulness of the soil: by reason of the evenness of the day and the night, and the rich dews which fall every morning." As the raiders advanced along this glorious grass-land they sometimes caught sight of Panama. Whenever they topped a rise they could see the city, though very far away; and at last, "on the last day," they saw the ships riding in the road, with the blue Pacific trembling away into the sky beyond them. Now was the woodcock near the gin, and now the raiders had to watch their steps. There was no cover on those rolling sweeps of grass. They were within a day's journey of the city. The grass-land (as Drake gathered from his guides) was a favourite hunting-ground of the city poulterers, for there, as Drake puts it, "the Dames of Panama are wont to send forth hunters and fowlers, for taking of sundry dainty fowl, which the land yieldeth." Such a body of men as theirs might readily be detected by one of these sportsmen, and one such detection would surely ruin the attempt. They therefore, crept like snakes "out of all ordinary way," worming themselves through the grass-clumps till they came to a little river-bed, in which a trickle of water ran slowly across the sun-bleached pebbles. They were minded to reach a grove or wood about a league from Panama. The sun beat upon them fiercely, and it was necessary for them to travel in the heat of the day. In that open country the midday heat was intense, but they contrived to gain the shelter of the wood by three that afternoon. "This last day," says the narrative, "our Captain did behold and view the most of all that fair city, discerning the large street which lieth directly from the sea into the land, South and North."