“At noon of the fifth day they reached Barbacoas, where in a cave, the buccaneers, to their intense joy, discovered two sacks of meal, two jars of wine and some bananas. These Morgan divided among the men who were suffering the most, and somewhat encouraged they proceeded on that terrible march. On the sixth day the men proceeded very slowly, partly from weakness and partly owing to the rough character of the land, and to keep themselves alive they devoured grasses, leaves and roots. But at noon they found a barrel of corn at a deserted plantation and without waiting devoured it dry and raw. Hardly an hour later they met an ambuscade of Indians, and feeling confident that they would be victors and would secure plentiful provisions they threw away the precious corn. But to their chagrin the Indians, after discharging a shower of arrows, disappeared like shadows in the forest, leaving no food and nothing to mark their presence save half a dozen dead buccaneers. “On the seventh day the buccaneers prepared and cleaned their arms, expecting to meet resistance just ahead, and then, crossing the river, they hurried forward to the village of La Cruz. As they approached they saw smoke rising above the trees, and, convinced that this meant the place was occupied, they made all haste towards it. Judge of their disgust when they found the village deserted and in flames, with, as Esquemeling humorously remarks, ‘nothing wherewith to refresh themselves unless it were good fires to warm themselves, which they wanted not.’ “But a search revealed something to eat—a few stray dogs and cats which they butchered and devoured raw and bleeding, and hardly had they completed this horrid repast when a party of the men found a sack of bread and sixteen jars of wine in the ruins of a stable. Scarcely had they commenced to eat and drink, however, when they were taken violently ill, and they at once decided the wine had been poisoned, although, as their chronicler very wisely says, it was more probable that it was ‘their huge want of sustenance in that whole voyage and the manifold sorts of trash they had eaten.’ “Whatever the cause, it compelled the expedition to remain there for an entire day. This village, then called La Cruz, was on the site of the present Las Cruces, the head of navigation on the Chagres and from which a branch of the Gold Road led to Panama about twenty-five miles distant. On the eighth day, Morgan sent forward a scouting party of two hundred men to find the best route and to learn of any ambuscades. This they did to their sorrow when, at Quebrada Obscura, they were met with a hurricane of arrows shot by Indians from hiding places in the deep forest on the summits of the cañon’s walls. A number of the buccaneers were killed and many wounded and a few Indians fell, but seeing such overwhelming numbers of the British approaching they soon took to their heels, and the buccaneers passed on and entered the savanna country.