spite of all opposition; and found in it, beside a vast quantity of rich merchandize, bullion and specie equivalent to one hundred thousand pounds sterling14.

A. D. 1669.

With this booty Morgan and his crew returned to Jamaica, where he immediately planned a new enterprise.Understanding that de Basco and Lolonois had been disappointed in the promised plunder of Maracaybo, by their imprudent delay, he resolved, from emulation, no less than avidity, to surprise that place. With this view he collected fifteen vessels, /carrying nine hundred and sixty men. These ravagers entered the gulf of Venezuela unobserved, silenced the fort that defends the passage to the lake of Maracaybo, and found the town, as formerly, totally deserted. But they were so fortunate as to discover the chief citizens, and the greater part of their wealth, in the neighbouring woods. Not satisfied, however with this booty, Morgan proceeded to Gibraltar, which he found in the same desolate condition; and while he was attempting by the most horrid cruelties, to extort from such of the inhabitants as had been seized, a discovery of their hidden treasures, he was informed of the arrival of three Spanish men of war at the entrance of the lake.

At this intelligence, which was confirmed by a boat dispatched to reconnoiter the enemy, the heart of the bravest buccaneer sunk within him. But although Morgan considered his situation as desperate, his presence of mind did not forsake him. Concealing hjs apprehensions, he sent a letter to Don Alonzo del Campo, the Spanish admiral, boldly demanding a ransom for the city of Maracaybo. The admiral's answer was resolute, and excluded all hope of working upon his fears. "I am come," said he, to "dispute your passage out of the lake: and I have the "means of doing it. Nevertheless, if you will submit to surrender, with humility, all the booty and prisoners

14. Hist. Buccaneers, part ii. chap. vi.

you

แ

you have taken, I will suffer you to pass, and permit you to return to your own country, without trouble or mo"lestation. But if you reject this offer, or hesitate to "comply, I will order boats from Caracas, in which I "will embark my troops; and, sailing to Maracaybo, "will put every man of you to the sword. This is my "final determination. Be prudent, therefore, and do "not abuse my bounty by an ungrateful return's. I have "with me," added he, "very good troops, who desire "nothing more ardently than to revenge on you and your "people all the cruelties and depredations which you have "committed upon the Spanish nation in America."

The moment Morgan received this letter, he called together his followers: and, after acquainting them with its contents, desired them to deliberate, whether they would give up all their plunder, in order to secure their liberty, or fight for it? They unanimously answered, That they would rather lose the last drop of their blood, than resign a booty which had been purchased with so much peril. Morgan, however, sensible of his dangerous situation, endeavoured to compromise the matter, but in vain. The Spanish admiral continued to insist on his first conditions. When Morgan was made acquainted with this inflexibility, he cooly replied: "If Don AlonZO will not allow me to pass, I will find means to pass "without his permission." He accordingly made a division of the spoil, that each man might have his own property to defend; and having filled a vessel, which he had taken from the enemy, with preparations of gun-powder and other combustible materials, he gallantly proceeded to the mouth of the lake; burnt two of the Spanish ships, took one; and by making a feint of disembarking men in order to attack the fort by land, he diverted the attention of the garrison to that side, while he passed the bar with

15." Dated on board the royal ship, named the Magdalen lying at an"chor at the entrance of the lake of Maracaybo, this 24th of April, 1466. Don ALONZO del campo.” Voy, des Flibust. Hist. Buccaneers, part ii. c. vii.

his whole fleet, on the other, without receiving any damage16.

The success of Morgan, like that of all ambitious leaders, served only to stimulate him to yet greater undertakings. Having disposed of his booty at A. D. 1670. Port Royal in Jamaica, he again put to sea with a larger fleet, and a more numerous body of adventurers; and after reducing the island of St. Catharine, where he procured a supply of naval and military stores, he steered for the river Chagre, the only channel that could conduct him to Panama, the grand object of his armament. At the mouth of this river stood a strong castle, built upon a rock, and defended by a good garrison, which threatened to baffle all the efforts of the buccaneers; when an arrow, shot from the bow of an Indian, lodged in the eye of one of those resolute men. With wonderful firmness and presence of mind, he pulled the arrow from the wound; and wrapping one of its ends in tow, put it into his musket, which was already loaded, and discharged it into the fort, where the roofs of the houses were of straw, and the sides of wood, conformable to the custom of building in that country. The burning arrow fell on the roof of one of the houses, which immediately took fire; a circumstance that threw the Spaniards into the utmost consternation, as they were afraid, every moment, of perishing by the rapid approach of the flames, or the blowing up of the powder-magazine. After the death of the governor, who bravely perished with his sword in his hand, at the head of a few determined men, the place surrendered to the assailants17.

This chief obstacle being removed, Morgan and his associates, leaving the larger vessels under guard, sailed up the Chagre in boats to Cruces, and thence proceeded by land to Panama. On the Savanna, a spacious plain before the city, the Spaniards made several attempts to repulse

16. Id. ibid. 17. Ulloa's Voyage, vol. i.

the

the ferocious invaders, but without effect: the buccaneers gained a decided superiority in every encounter. Foreseeing the overthrow of their military protectors, the unarmed inhabitants sought refuge in the woods; so that Morgan took quiet possession of Panama, and deliberately pillaged it for some days13.

But Morgan met at Panama with what he valued no less than his rich booty. A fair captive inflamed his savage heart with love; and, finding all his solicitations. ineffectual, as neither his person nor character was calculated to inspire the object of his passion with favourable sentiments toward him, he resolved to second his assiduities with a seasonable mixture of force. "Stop, ruffian!" cried she, as she wildly sprung from his arms:-"stop! thinkest thou that thou canst ravish from me mine honour, as thou hast wrested from me my fortune and my liberty? No! be assured that my soul shall sooner be separated from this body:"-and she drew a poinard from her bosom, which she would have plunged into his heart, if he had not avoided the blow 9.

Enraged at such a return to his fondness, Morgan threw this virtuous beauty into a loathsome dungeon, and endeavoured to break her spirit by severities. But his followers becoming clamorous at being kept so long in a state of inactivity by a caprice which they could not comprehend, he was obliged to listen to their importunities,

18. Id. ibid.

19. The Spanish ladies, however, as we learn from the freebooter Ravenau de Lussan, were not all possessed of the same inflexible virtue. The buccaneers had been represented to them as devils, as cannibals, and beings who were destitute of the human form. They accordingly trembled at the very name of those plunderers. But on a nearer approach they found them to be men, and some of them handsome fellows. And in this, as in all cases where they have been abused by false representations of our sex, the women flew to the opposite extreme as soon as they were undeceived; and clasped in their amorous arms the murderers of their husbands and brothers. Charmed with the ardour of a band of adventurers whose every passion was in excess; they did not part without tears of agony from the warm embrace of their piratical paramours to return into the cool paths of common

life.

Voy, des Flibust, chap, iv. v.

and

and give up his amorous pursuit 20. As a prelude to their return, the booty was divided, and Morgan's own share in the pillage of this expedition, is said to have amounted to one hundred thousand pounds sterling. He carried all his wealth to Jamaica, and never afterwards engaged in any piratical enterprize21.

The defection of Morgan, and several other principal leaders, who sought and found an asylum in the bosom of that civil society, whose laws they had so atrociously violated, together with the total separation of the English and French buccaneers, in consequence of the war between the two nations, which followed the revolution in 1688, broke the force of those powerful plunderers. The king of Spain being then in alliance with England, A. D. 1690. she repressed the piracies of her subjects in the West-Indies. The French buccaneers continued their depredations, and with no small success, till the peace of Ryswick in 1697; when all differences between France and Spain having been adjusted, a stop was every where put to hostilities, and not only the association, but the very name of this extraordinary set of men soon became extinct. They were insensibly lost among the other European inhabitants of the West-Indies.

Before this period, however, the French colony in Hispaniola had arrived at a considerable degree of prosperity; and Jamaica, into which the spoils of Mexico and Peru were more abundantly poured, was already in a flourishing condition. The buccaneers found at Port-Royal better reception, and greater security, than any where else. They could there land their booty with the utmost facility, and spend in a variety of pleasures the wealth arising from their piracy; and as prodigality and debauchery soon reduced them again to indigence, that grand incitement to their

20. Hist. Buccanneers, part iii. chap. v. vi.

21. After Morgan settled in Jamaica, he was knighted by that prince of pleasure and whim, Charles II.

sanguinary