On April 23rd the buccaneers entered the Bay of Panama, and the city, offering a fair and lovely prospect, as Dampier afterwards tells us, lay full in their view. The old town that had been sacked and burnt by Henry Morgan in 1670 lay four miles to the eastward of the new city; but amongst those now suburban ruins the cathedral rose stately and splendid, and Ringrose, enraptured by the sight, vows that the building viewed from the sea might compare in majesty with St. Paul's. The Panama at which Dampier gazed was almost new, built of brick and stone, with eight churches amongst the houses, most of them unfinished. Many of the edifices were three stories high. A strong wall circled the place, crowned with seaward-pointing cannon, and these defences were backed by a garrison of three hundred of the king's soldiers, whilst the city itself supplemented that force by a contribution of eleven hundred militiamen. Such was the Panama of which our handful of audacious buccaneers were coolly proposing the sacking, and doubtless the burning. It seems, however, that when they arrived most of the soldiers were absent, and Ringrose tells us that had they attempted the town at once instead of attacking the ships in the bay, they must have made an easy conquest. The desperate energy, the hot and furious courage, of an earlier race of pirates were wanting in them. They lingered long enough to enable the city to render its capture impracticable, and then, feigning a sentimental interest in the condition of the Indians, they despatched word to the Governor that if he would suffer the natives to enjoy their own “power and liberty,” and send to the buccaneers five hundred pieces of eight for each man, and one thousand pieces of eight for each commander, they would desist from further hostilities. A civil message was returned, and they were also asked from whom they received their commission; to which Captain Sawkins responded in a style which he may have borrowed from the tragedies of Nathaniel Lee: “That as yet all his company were not come together; but that when they were come up, we would come and visit him at Panama, and bring our commissions on the muzzles of our guns, at which time he should read them as plain as the flame of gunpowder could make them.” All this was mere windy, hectoring talk, and nothing followed it. The buccaneers were growing mutinous with famine, and as it was clear there was nothing to be done with Panama, Captain Sawkins, who was chief in command, gave orders to weigh anchor, and the pirates sailed away without a ducat's worth of satisfaction for the prodigious hardships they had endured.