Many of the vessels were lost sight of in the storm. The Marquis de Vaudreuil steered to the southward, to an appointed rendezvous in the harbor of St. John, on the island of Porto Rico. As he made the land he was informed that sixteen British men-of-war, under Admiral Hood, were cruising off Cape Francois, on the look-out for him; and that a still larger naval force, under Admiral Pigot, was watching for him at Lucca, one of the extreme western towns of the island of Jamaica. England had made such ample preparation for this anticipated assault; that it was thought that the French squadron must fall a prey, either to Hood or Pigot. Vaudreuil remained at St. John, Porto Rico, ten days, waiting the arrival of other vessels of his fleet. Here he performed all kinds of naval evolutions, as a general on land would review his army. He also found at this place a very ample supply from France, to replenish his stores. The island of Porto Rico, which lies off the eastern coast of St. Domingo, is about one hundred and thirty miles in length, by thirty miles in breadth. The strait, but eighty miles wide, which separates it from San Domingo, is called the Mona Passage. The island was then in a state of prosperity, and it carried on very extensive commerce with France and Spain. It at that time belonged to Spain, and contained a population of about eighty thousand. The native inhabitants had all melted away. The principal city, St. John, enjoyed a very fine harbor, and had a population of about thirty thousand. The marquis convoyed, with his fleet, sixteen French merchant vessels from the eastern to the western end of the island, along the northern coast. The general rendezvous, for the French and Spanish fleet, had been appointed, with the greatest secrecy, at a little island called Port Cabello, but a few miles off the extreme northern coast of Venezuela. Some light vessels of Admiral Hood’s squadron, which were cruising as scouts, caught sight of the French fleet in the Mona passage. They immediately ran back with the tidings that the fleet was coasting along the southern shore of the San Domingo. But Vaudreuil suddenly turned his direction south, sailed down between two and three hundred miles to the unfrequented islands which are scattered along the northern shore of Venezuela. The little island of Port Cabello was about sixty miles west of the much better known island of Curaçoa. A great expedition of this kind is liable to innumerable hindrances. It can never succeed, unless there is some imperial, Napoleonic mind, which can appreciate all its grandeur, and at the same time can regulate all its minutest details. Such enterprises render a dictatorship, for that purpose, indispensable. A ship of war, an army, a fleet, must be under dictatorial power.