They sailed from Juan Fernandez on April 8th, still in company with Eaton's ship. During the month of May they captured several vessels, in one of which, besides a quantity of marmalade, they found a stately and handsome mule designed as a gift for the President of Panama, and an immense wooden image of the Virgin Mary. They were, however, unfortunate enough to miss what would have better pleased them than mules and images; for when this ship started from Lima she had eight hundred thousand dollars on board, but on her arrival at Guanchaco news of a privateersman then hovering off the port of Valdivia came to the ears of the merchants, who thereupon instantly removed every stiver out of the vessel. The recital, even in an abbreviated form, of the adventures of these buccaneers upon the Western American seaboard would make a book of nearly half the thickness of Dampier's first volume. As a mere journal of exploits perhaps the narrative grows after a while a little tedious. One sea-fight is like another; the assaults by land lead to nothing; the prizes captured at sea are insignificant. Yet Dampier's page continues to charm us by the vivacity of his descriptions of coasts, of storms, of the corposant, of the turtle, and by a hundred unlaboured and unconscious felicities of phrase. When off Cape Blanco Captain Cooke died. He was ill when at Juan Fernandez, and continued so till within two or three leagues of the Cape, when he suddenly expired, though Dampier tells us he seemed that morning to be as likely to live as he had been some weeks before; “But it is usual for sick Men coming from the Sea, where they have nothing but the Sea-Air, to die off as soon as ever they come within view of the Land.”