_Authorities._--Exquemeling's "History"; "The Bucaniers of America." Don Guzman's Account, printed in the "Voyages and Adventures of Captain Bartholomew Sharp." Cal. State Papers: West Indies and Colonial Series. "Present State of Jamaica," 1683. "New History of Jamaica," 1740. For my account of Chagres I am indebted to friends long resident on the isthmus, and to Dampier's and Wafer's Voyages. CHAPTER XII THE SACK OF PANAMA The burning of the city--Buccaneer excesses--An abortive mutiny--Home--Morgan's defection "On the tenth day, betimes in the morning," while the black and white monkeys were at their dawn song, or early screaming, the pirates fell in for the march, with their red flags flying and the drums and trumpets making a battle music. They set out gallantly towards the city by the road they had followed from Venta Cruz. Before they came under fire, one of the guides advised Morgan to attack from another point. The Spaniards, he said, had placed their heavy guns in position along the probable line of their advance. Every clump of trees near the trackway would be filled with Spanish sharpshooters, while they might expect earth-works or trenches nearer to the city. He advised Morgan to make a circuit, so as to approach the city through the forest--over the ground on which new Panama was built, a year or two later. Morgan, therefore, turned rather to the west of the highway, through some tropical woodland, where the going was very irksome. As they left the woodland, after a march of several hours, they again entered the savannah, at a distance of about a mile and a half from the town. The ground here was in sweeping folds, so that they had a little hill to climb before the town lay open to them, at the edge of the sea, to the eastward of the salt lagoon. When they topped this rise they saw before them "the forces of the people of Panama, extended in battle array," between them and the quarry.