But the whole undertaking was a failure. They attacked and took the town of Santa Maria, and found the place to consist of a few houses built of cane, with not so much as the value of a single ducat anywhere to be met with. Their disappointment was rendered the keener by the news that three days before their arrival several hundred-weight of gold had been sent away to Panama in one of those ships which were commonly despatched two or three times a year from that city to convey the treasure brought to Santa Maria from the mountains. Their ill-luck, however, hardened them in their resolution to attack Panama. The city was a sort of New Jerusalem to the imaginations of these men, who thought of it as half-formed of storehouses filled to their roofs with plate, jewels, and gold. They stayed two days at Santa Maria, and then on April 17th, 1680, embarked in thirty-five canoes and a periagua, and rowed down the river in quest of the South Sea, upon which, as Ringrose puts it, Panama is seated. Their adventures were many; their hardships and distresses such as rendered their energy and fortitude phenomenal even amongst a community who were incomparably gifted with these qualities. Ringrose, whose narrative I follow, was wrecked in the river by the oversetting of his canoe, and came very near to perishing along with a number of his comrades. He fell into the hands of some Spaniards, with whom, as they understood neither English nor French, whilst he was equally ignorant of their tongue, he was obliged to converse in Latin!—a language in which, I suspect, not many mariners of to-day could communicate their distresses. He and his shipmates narrowly escaped torture and a miserable death, and eventually recovering their canoe, they started afresh on their voyage, and were fortunate enough next morning to fall in with the rest of the buccaneers, who had anchored during the night in a deep bay.