The English slave-traders and adventurers made no scruple of braving the King of Spain's edicts; and the estuary of the Plate, within a few weeks' sail of Europe, saw many a cargo welcomed upon a mere pretence of force by the colonists whose lives were rendered doubly hard by the obstacles placed in their way by their own Government. In 1586 the Earl of Cumberland's ships on a privateering expedition to capture every Spanish and Portuguese vessel they encountered sailed into the River Plate and learnt some interesting particulars of the settlements from one of the unfortunate shipmasters they had plundered. These give a good idea of the difficulties under which traffic was then carried on. "He told me that the town of Buenos Aires is from the Green island about seventy leagues' standing on the south side of the river, and from thence to Santa Fé is one hundred leagues, standing on the same side also. At which town their ships do discharge all their goods into small barks, which row and tow up the river to another town called Asuncion, which is from Santa Fé a hundred and fifty leagues, where the boats discharge on shore, and so pass all their goods by carts and horses to Tucuman, which is in Peru." The commerce here referred to was probably the contraband trade done in spite of the Spanish regulations, for it was found that even to the far distant towns in the interior, like Tucuman and Mendoza, it was easier and cheaper thus to convey goods from Europe by the eastern coast than from the Pacific across the almost impassable Andes. The Earl of Cumberland's factor gives also an account of the Spanish settlements then (1586) existing on the River Plate.[1] "There are in the river five towns, some of seventy households, some of more. The first town was about fifty leagues up the river and called Buenos Aires, the rest some forty or fifty leagues from one another, so that the uppermost town, called Tucuman, is two hundred and thirty leagues from the entrance to the river.[2] In these towns is great store of corn, cattle, wine and sundry fruits, but no money of gold or silver. They make a certain kind of slight cloth, which they give in truck for sugar, rice, marmalade, and sucket, which were the commodities this ship (_i.e._, the prize) had."