That these buccaneers had a large amount of physical bravery, goes without saying; for only a man who feared nothing could undertake such apparently hopeless tasks as these wild plunderers carried to a successful conclusion. In fact many times they were successful for the reason that the vessels or towns they attacked deemed themselves secure from attack by so small a force as the pirates could muster. They were inured to hardship and willing to undergo any amount of pain and suffering, if they could but gather the riches for which they sought. The accounts of their adventures are filled with description of daring deeds, which if undertaken in a better cause would have made the men famous for all time. The beginning of these expeditions may be placed at about 1625, and the last important cruise of the pirates was made in 1688. After the latter date they gradually dispersed, and the buccaneers appeared no more. In 1664, Mansveldt, who was one of the ablest of the pirate chiefs, conceived the idea of forming an independent government with a flag of its own, and locating his capital at Santa Katalina. His early death prevented him from realizing his purpose; and though his successor, the famous Henry Morgan, attempted to carry out the plan, it met with such opposition from the Governor of Jamaica that it was definitely abandoned. It was under the leadship of this same Morgan that the buccaneers reached the height of their reputation, and executed their most daring and successful raids. Among Morgan's performances was the capture of the town of Puerto del Principe in Cuba, and the cities of Porto Bello, Maracaibo and Gibraltar in South America. His greatest exploit, however, occurred in 1670, when at the head of the fleet of thirty-seven ships of all sizes manned by more than two thousand pirates, he captured the forts on the Chagres River, marched across the Isthmus of Panama, and after ten days of incredible hardship and suffering, fighting against a force of twenty-five hundred men, captured the city of Panama. After a stay of about three weeks he returned across the Isthmus. So unsatisfactory in value were the spoils of this expedition, that Morgan was accused of embezzling some portion, and in consequence became very unpopular with his followers. However, as this expedition was made against the Spanish, it received some approval from the English; and Morgan, abandoning his career as a pirate, accepted the lieutenant-governorship of Jamaica, and was subsequently made governor of that island, in which capacity he did much toward suppressing piracy in the Caribbean Sea.