This is the kind of simplicity that makes the perusal of the old voyages wonderfully refreshing and delightful. The old fellows looked at life with the eyes of a child but with the intelligence of a man; and so it happens that their representations combine a most perfect and fascinating simplicity with the highest possible qualities of acuteness and sagacity. On October 1st the ships were off the Mexican coast. When the form of the land grew visible Dampier told Rogers that it was hereabouts he attacked the Manila ship in the _St. George_. He might have been right, but Rogers does not speak as if he thought so, for he says: “Captain Dampier indeed had been here, but it was a long time ago, and therefore he seemed to know but little of the Matter; yet when he came to land in Places he recollected them very readily.” They suffered much from scarcity of fresh water, and sent the pinnace to explore some islands—the Tres Marias—lying off Cape Corrientes. On one of them they found a human skull, which was supposed to have belonged to an Indian who, with another poor wretch of his own race, had been left there by Captain Swan some twenty-three years before. Dampier of course well remembered the circumstance; he had been with Swan in the _Cygnet_ at the time, and could recollect that provisions being scarce they had left the unhappy Indians to make, as Rogers says, a miserable end on a desert Island. To judge, however, from the refreshments these uninhabited spots yielded, the Indians could not have perished from starvation. The buccaneers met with hares, turtle-doves, pigeons, and parrots, on all of which they fared sumptuously. The sick thrived, and the general health of the crews was never better. On November 1st they were in view of the high coast of California. It was much about the date when Sir Thomas Candish had taken the Manila ship, and, strangely enough, their keels ploughed the very tract of water in which that remarkable feat had been achieved. The memory, aged to us, but lacking nothing of its old lustre, was to those men comparatively recent, and the recollection was one to animate them with great hopes and stern resolves. They were indeed bent now on the adventure whose successful issue had loaded Candish's ship with treasure. They were on the look-out for the galleon, and that nothing might be omitted to render fortune propitious, they again put in force the rules which had formerly been laid down for cruising, established fresh regulations, and made clear every dubious item in their programme of proceedings and plunder. It was this galleon that was to make their fortunes; she it was also that formed the grand hope of the Bristol committee of merchant adventurers; and the design of capturing her was the mainspring of the whole expedition. After a consultation it was agreed that they should dispose themselves thus: the _Marquis_ was to keep off the land at a distance of from six to nine leagues at least;