While they lay at Golden Island, the Indians brought them word of "a town called Santa Maria," on the Rio Santa Maria, near the Gulf of San Miguel, on the Pacific coast. It was a garrison town, with four companies of musketeers in its fort, for there were gold mines in the hills behind it. The gold caravans went from it, once a month in the dry seasons, to Panama. If the place failed to yield them a booty, the buccaneers were determined to attack new Panama. Had they done so they would probably have destroyed the place, for though the new city was something stronger than the old, the garrison was in the interior fighting the Indians. The design on Santa Maria was popular. On the matter being put to the vote it was carried without protest. The buccaneers passed the 4th of April in arranging details, and picking a party to protect the ships during their absence. They arranged that Captains Alleston and Macket, with about twenty-five or thirty seamen, should remain in the anchorage as a ship's guard. The remainder of the buccaneers, numbering 331 able-bodied men (seven of whom were French), were to march with the colours the next morning. On the 5th of April 1680, these 331 adventurers dropped across the channel from Golden Island, and landed on the isthmus, somewhere near Drake's old anchorage. Captain Bartholomew Sharp, of "the dangerous voyage and bold assaults," came first, with some Indian guides, one of whom helped the Captain, who was sick and faint with a fever. This vanguard "had a red flag, with a bunch of white and green ribbons." The second company, or main battle, was led by the admiral, Richard Sawkins, who "had a red flag striped with yellow." The third and fourth companies, which were under one captain (Captain Peter Harris), had two green flags. The fifth and sixth companies, under Captain John Coxon, "had each of them a red flag." A few of Alleston's and Macket's men carried arms under Coxon in these companies. The rear-guard was led by Captain Edmund Cook, "with red colours striped with yellow, with a hand and sword for his device." "All or most" of the men who landed, "were armed with a French fuzee" (or musket), a pistol and hanger, with two pounds of powder and "proportionable bullet." Each of them carried a scrip or satchel containing "three or four cakes of bread," or doughboys, weighing half-a-pound apiece, with some modicum of turtle flesh. "For drink the rivers afforded enough."