On the vessel's arrival at Port Royal the crew were discharged. Dampier, whose hankering was after the logwood trade, embarked as passenger on board a vessel bound to Campeché, and sailed about the middle of February 1676. He went fully provided for the toilsome work—that is to say, with hatchets, axes, a kind of long knives which he calls “macheats,” saws, wedges, materials for a house, or, as he terms it, a pavilion to sleep in, a gun, ammunition, and so forth. His account of the origin and growth of the business he had now entered upon is interesting. The Spaniards had long known the value of the logwood, and used to cut it down near a river about thirty miles from Campeché, whence they loaded their ships with it. The English, after possessing themselves of Jamaica, whilst cruising about in the Gulf, frequently encountered many vessels freighted with this wood; but being ignorant of the value of such cargoes, they either burnt or sent the ships adrift, preserving only the nails and iron-work. At last one Captain James, having captured a big vessel full of wood, navigated her to England with the intention of fitting her out as a privateer. He valued his prize's cargo so lightly that on the way home he consumed a portion of it as fuel. On his arrival he, to his great surprise, was offered a large sum for the remainder. This being noised about started the trade amongst the English. Of course the Spaniards opposed the cutting down of the trees, and sent soldiers to protect their property; but the English speedily learnt to recognise the timber as it grew, and, hunting for it elsewhere, met with large forests, and so without regard to the Spaniards they settled down to the trade and did pretty well at it. The work previous to the arrival of Dampier employed nearly three hundred men who had originally been privateersmen and gained a living by plundering the Spaniards, but who, on peace being made with Spain, lost their occupation and were driven to logwood-cutting by hunger. But their tastes as pirates remained tenacious, and perhaps by way of keeping their hand in, they formed into little troops, attacked and plundered the adjacent Indian towns, brought away the women and sent the men to Jamaica to be sold as slaves. Dampier further informs us that these privateersmen had not “forgot their old drinking bouts,” but would “still spend thirty or forty pounds at a sitting on board the ships that came hither from Jamaica, carousing and firing off guns three and four days together.” Eventually their evil habits led to their ruin, for the Spaniards finding them nearly continually drunk, fell upon them one by one, seizing them chiefly in their huts, where they lay stupefied with liquor, and carried them to prison or to a servitude harder than slavery. Logwood was then worth fourteen or fifteen pounds a ton. The toil must have been great, for some of the trees were upwards of six feet round, and the labourer had to cut them