after the fleet is gone." Those who stayed must have had a weary life of it, for there could have been nothing for them to do save to go a-fishing. The fever never left the place, and there was always the dread of the Cimmeroons. Out in the bay there was the steaming water, with a few rotten hulks waiting to be cast ashore, and two or three rocky islets sticking up for the sea to break against. There was nothing for an inhabitant to do except to fish, and nothing for him to see except the water, with the dripping green trees beside it, and, perhaps, an advice boat slipping past for Cartagena. Once a year an express came to the bay from Panama to say that the Peru fleet had arrived at that port. A letter was then sent to Cartagena or to San Juan d'Ulloa to order the great galleons there anchored to come to collect the treasure, and convey it into Spain. Before they dropped anchor in the Nombre de Dios bay that city was filled to overflowing by soldiers and merchants from Panama and the adjacent cities. Waggons of maize and cassava were dragged into the streets, with numbers of fowls and hogs. Lodgings rose in value, until a "middle chamber" could not be had for less than 1000 crowns. Desperate efforts were made to collect ballast for the supply ships. Then the treasure trains from Panama began to arrive. Soldiers marched in, escorting strings of mules carrying chests of gold and silver, goatskins filled with bezoar stones, and bales of vicuna wool. The town became musical with the bells of the mules' harness. Llamas spat and hissed at the street corners. The Plaza became a scene of gaiety and bustle. Folk arrived hourly by the muddy track from Panama. Ships dropped anchor hourly, ringing their bells and firing salutes of cannon. The grand fair then began, and the city would be populous and stirring till the galleons had cleared the harbour on the voyage to Spain. As soon as the fleet was gone the city emptied as rapidly as it had filled. The merchants and merry-makers vanished back to Panama, and the thirty odd wretched souls who stayed, began their dreary vigil until the next year, when the galleons returned. In 1584, on the report of Antonio Baptista, surveyor to the King of Spain, the trade was removed to Porto Bello, a beautiful bay, discovered and named by Columbus, lying some twenty miles farther to the west. It is a good harbour for all winds, and offers every convenience for the careening of vessels. The surveyor thought it in every way a superior harbour. "Neither," he writes, "will so many die there as there daily doe in Nombre de Dios." By the middle of the seventeenth century the ruins of the old town were barely discernible; but all traces of them have long since disappeared. Dampier (writing of the year 1682) says that: "I have lain ashore in the place where that City stood; but it is all overgrown with Wood; so as toe leave noe sign that any Town hath been there." A thick green cane brake has overgrown the Plaza.