Morgan's expedition had pointed out a short way to the South Sea; and in 1680, some three hundred English buccaneers started from the Atlantic side to cross the isthmus. They formed an alliance with the Darien Indians, who furnished them a quantity of canoes upon the Pacific side. They launched out in these into the Bay of Panama, attacked three large armed ships, took two of them, and began cruising in them. They captured vessels and plundered towns along the coast. Some of them remained a long time in the South Sea, and made many discoveries of undoubted benefit to mankind. The Spaniards never dared to defend themselves unless they greatly outnumbered their assailants, and even then they were usually routed with ease. They had become so enervated by luxury that they had lost all military spirit and had well-nigh forgotten the use of arms. They had acquired from the monks the idea that the buccaneers were devils, cannibals, and beings of monstrous form. They revenged themselves upon the enemy whom they dared not meet by mangling and subjecting to mimic tortures such dead bodies of the invaders as were left behind,--an exhibition of impotent rage which only excited the buccaneers to fresh cruelties. One of the English buccaneers--William Dampier--became subsequently an eminent discoverer, author, and philosopher. After receiving a collegiate education, he went to sea in northern latitudes, which for a time disgusted him with a maritime life. A voyage to the East Indies, the superintendence of a plantation in Jamaica, and three years spent among the logwood-cutters of Campeachy, gave him a strong bias for the tropical waters. In Campeachy he became acquainted with some of the buccaneers, whose descriptions of their adventures kindled in him a fondness for a roving and piratical life. He joined an expedition under Captain John Cooke: an English pilot named Cowley was engaged as master, and embarked in complete ignorance of the nature of the voyage. They sailed in August, 1683, in the Revenge, mounting eight guns and manned by fifty-two men. Cowley was told the first day that the vessel's mission was trade and her destination St. Domingo; on the second, he was informed that piracy was her object and Guinea her market.