The capture of Panama, however, was the last great land expedition successfully undertaken by the buccaneers. A few other land expeditions, it is true, were begun by chiefs of lesser note; but the indifferent success which attended these, induced the freebooters insensibly to confine their operations more exclusively to the water, and there was no sea left untraversed by them, from the Atlantic to the Indian ocean. The commerce of almost all nations was annoyed by them, although their depredations continued more particularly to be directed against the first objects of their hate, the Spaniards. It is a curious fact, illustrating the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church at that time, that in one of the Spanish ships captured while on her way to South America, by an Englishman named White, there were found no less than two millions of Papal bulls, granting indulgences to the Spaniards of the New World! These were a royal trade, and had been purchased by the king of Spain for three hundred thousand florins, _prime cost_, and by him were designed to be retailed for five millions. Thus, by their capture, his Catholic Majesty lost the benefit of a fine speculation. Had these indulgences been captured by Yankees, they would have contrived to barter them away at a profit; or had the captors been good Catholics, they might have ravaged the whole continent with very quiet consciences, having the Pope's pardon already in their pockets.[B] It is a curious fact, not, I believe, very extensively understood, that the great English circumnavigator Dampier was for a considerable period connected with the buccaneers after the flight of Morgan. Dampier found himself among them at first by accident, having gone ashore on the Spanish main in great distress to procure provisions. Falling in with a party of the marauders, he was induced to join them. He was at the taking of Porto Bello; and afterward crossed the Isthmus of Darien with Sawkins, Sharp, and others. Sawkins, the commander, was killed in an attack on Puebla Nova in 1679. Dampier, in his 'Voyages,' gives an interesting account of their subsequent course along the coasts, and among the islands of the Pacific, which was rather disastrous. A mutiny, however, occurring among those of the buccaneers engaged in the expedition, Dampier returned across the Isthmus and came to Virginia in July, 1682, where, after he and his companions had dissipated all their wealth, they fitted out another piratical expedition for the South seas, doubling Cape Horn in the spring of 1684. Proceeding northward to Panama, Dampier's party were joined by large numbers of buccaneers who had just crossed the Isthmus; and obtaining a number of additional vessels, they prepared to intercept the Plate fleet on its departure from Lima for Spain. After a few successes, and several disasters, Dampier and his companions sailed to the Philippine Islands in 1686; and subsequently visited most of the islands in the Pacific, sometimes