Dampier writes concerning this first irruption of the buccaneers into the Pacific:--"Before my first going over into the South Seas with Captain Sharp ... I being then on Board Captain Coxon, in company with 3 or 4 more Privateers, about 4 leagues to the East of Portobel, we took the Pacquets bound thither from Cartagena. We open'd a great quantity of the Merchants Letters, and found ... the Merchants of several parts of Old Spain thereby informing their Correspondents of Panama and elsewhere of a certain Prophecy that went about Spain that year, the Tenour of which was, That there would be English Privateers that Year in the West Indies, who would ... open a Door into the South Seas; which they supposed was fastest shut: and the Letters were accordingly full of Cautions to their Friends to be very watchful and careful of their Coasts. "This Door they spake of we all concluded must be the Passage over Land through the Country of the Indians of Darien, who were a little before this become our Friends, and had lately fallen out with the Spaniards, ... and upon calling to mind the frequent Invitations we had from these Indians a little before this time, to pass through their Country, and fall upon the Spaniards in the South Seas, we from henceforward began to entertain such thoughts in earnest, and soon came to a Resolution to make those Attempts which we afterwards did, ... so that the taking these Letters gave the first life to those bold undertakings: and we took the advantage of the fears the Spaniards were in from that Prophecy ... for we sealed up most of the Letters again, and sent them ashore to Portobel."--_Ed._ 1906, I. pp. 200-201.] [Footnote 410: C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, No. 1199.] [Footnote 411: Ibid., No. 1188.] [Footnote 412: Sloane MSS., 2572, f. 29.] [Footnote 413: C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 1344, 1370.] [Footnote 414: Ibid., No. 1516.] [Footnote 415: _Cf._ Archives Coloniales--Correspondance generale de St Domingue, vol. i.; Martinique, vol. iv.] [Footnote 416: C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 1420, 1425; Sloane MSS., 2724, f. 3.] [Footnote 417: Sloane MSS., 2724, f. 198. Coxon probably did not submit, for Dampier tells us that at the end of May 1681, Coxon was lying with seven or eight other privateers at the Samballas, islands on the coast of Darien, with a ship of ten guns and 100 men.--_Ed._ 1906, i. p. 57.] [Footnote 418: Ibid., f. 200; C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 16, 51, 144, 431. Everson was not shot and killed in the water, as Morgan's account implies, for he flourished for many years afterwards as one of the most notorious of the buccaneer captains.] [Footnote 419: Ringrose's Journal. _Cf._ also S.P. Spain, vol. 67, f. 169; C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, No. 872.] [Footnote 420: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 431, 632, 713; Hist. MSS. Commiss., VII., 405 b.] [Footnote 421: C.S.P Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 1425, 1462.] [Footnote 422: Ibid., No. 1361.]