“This exactly suited the assembled buccaneers; it was unanimously agreed to join fortunes with the Frenchman, and, supplying their ships with sea turtles and maize, the captains set sail for Darien. The fleet consisted of nine vessels with four hundred and seventy-seven men and without adventure they arrived at the San Blas Islands. Here the Indians welcomed them, for the San Blas tribe had, from time immemorial, been allies of the corsairs, but when they learned of the buccaneers’ purpose they frowned upon it. Tocamora, they said, was in a mountainous country; the way was long and rough, it was in an uninhabited district where food was scarce, and the place was not as rich as had been reported. Instead, the Indians suggested that the buccaneers should cross the Isthmus, take the outlying city of El Real de Santa Maria, which was the depot for all the gold from the incredibly rich mines of Darien, and then proceed to attack the new city of Panama. It was a wild, harebrained, daring and almost hopeless scheme, but it appealed to the buccaneers and, aside from Captain Row and Bournano, all agreed to follow the Indians’ advice. “On April 5, 1680, the buccaneers landed on the mainland three hundred and thirty-one strong, and, leaving a few men and Captains Alleston and Macket to guard the ships, the dauntless buccaneers started on their terrible march, carrying for provisions but three cakes of cassava each and all heavily armed. “Following their Indian guides, the buccaneers divided into six companies and entered the jungle. The very first day their hardships began. So impenetrable was the forest that it was necessary to hew a way every yard, there were rivers to cross, swamps to wade through, and clouds of mosquitoes made life miserable. The first day four men gave up and returned to the coast, but the others, of whom, as I have said, Dampier was a member, kept doggedly on. Through pouring rain, climbing precipitous mountains, swimming rivers, the buccaneers proceeded on their way and at the close of the second day had covered nearly eighteen miles. Often, as Ringrose tells us, they were obliged to cross the same river over and over again, but at noon of the third day they came to a village of the wild Kuna Indians. Ringrose and Dampier describe the Indians very well, speaking particularly of the painted wooden crowns, the red caps and the gold nose rings worn by the chiefs, exactly as they are to-day. The Indians were friendly, they supplied the buccaneers fruit and provisions, and the footsore corsairs spent the day resting in the Indians’ huts. On the tenth of April a river large enough to be navigable by canoes was reached, and Captains Sharp, Coxon, Cook and Ringrose, with seventy men, embarked in fourteen dugouts. But they soon found that gliding down the Chukunaque River was by no means a relief from the overland tramp. Fallen trees and bars filled the stream; at every few yards the buccaneers were compelled to