In the wake of the buccaneers

by A. Hyatt Verrill

As a result, the corsairs always were welcomed to the Indian villages; they always found refuge there in time of need; and the Indians gladly supplied them with game, grain, and vegetables, and even with canoes and guides. Indeed, without the guides and the craft supplied by the Kunas and Chokois, Sharp’s “dangerous voyage” could never have been accomplished, for it would have been out of the question for the buccaneers to cross the isthmus, to gain the Pacific, and to attack the Spanish fleet.

But even with the Indians’ help the feat was marvelous. When one attempts to follow their route to-day and sees the country through which they traveled, one realizes the odds against them. So dense is the jungle that in many places it is impossible to proceed a yard without cutting a way through the tangle of lianas, thorny bush, spiny palms, poisonous plants, and tangled, razor-edged saw-grass. There are deep, swift rivers, precipitous mountain sides, impassable ravines; and yet through this wilderness these daring men forced a way led by their Indian friends—and got through safely. [[328]]

It is bad enough to cross Darien afoot in the dry season, with every convenience, but the pirates, three hundred strong, undertook the journey in the rainy season, April, and for provisions had only “four cakes of bread” apiece, while their equipment consisted of a fusee, a pistol, and a hanger each. In order that there might be no mistake and their fellows be taken for enemies, the company was divided into seven parties, each carrying a flag of a distinguishing color. With six Indians as guides the three hundred and twenty-seven men set forth. Through the jungle and up the mountains they toiled, fording or swimming the streams, often crossing the same river a dozen times, beset by noxious insects, filled with superstitious fears of monstrous fabulous beasts, constantly drenched with rain but never halting, never hesitating. Here and there they came to Indian villages which, according to descriptions by Ringrose and Dampier, were exactly like those one finds in Darien to-day, and everywhere the friendly Indians supplied them with plantains, cassava, corn, and game. At last, without the loss of a man, and with fifty Indians who had joined the expedition, they reached the Santa Maria (now Tuira) River and embarked in sixty-eight canoes supplied by the Indians. [[329]]

But Ringrose says:

If we had been tired whilst traveling by land before, certainly we were in a worse condition in our canoes. For at a distance of every stone’s cast we were constrained to get out of our boats and haul them over sand or rocks or over trees that lay across and filled up the river, yea, several times over the very points of land itself.

All of which very vividly and precisely describes the conditions one meets when traveling in Darien to-day, as I know from personal experience.

And when at last they gained the broader reaches of the river and swept down upon the little frontier town of El Real de Santa Maria, and with fifty men took the fort despite its garrison of two hundred and sixty men (with a loss among the pirates of only one killed and two wounded), they found to their chagrin that they were just too late. Only three days previously the accumulated treasure from the Caña mine—over three hundred pounds of gold ingots—had been taken by ship to Panama, and El Real was as bare as old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.

But the pirates had no mind to return empty-handed. The treasure had gone to Panama, and other riches were there, too, no doubt. So, tumbling into the frail dugouts, they started for the great city, nothing daunted, and, as already described in a previous chapter, boarded and [[330]]captured the Spanish fleet, took possession of the flag-ship, and, transforming her into a pirate vessel, ravished the coast of South America, and eventually rounded the Horn, and reached the Caribbean in safety.

El Real is still in existence, and just below the present village one may yet see the crumbling ruins of the town Sharp and his men took at the conclusion of that terrible journey, through the jungle, from the Atlantic.

In the old days El Real de Santa Maria was an important outpost, the heavily guarded, stockaded repository of vast quantities of gold taken from La Caña and scores of other mines in the district; while to it from what is now Colombia were brought gold-dust and emeralds. But Sharp’s raid spelled the doom of Darien. The Dons, realizing that where pirates had once crossed others could find a way, felt that treasure was unsafe there; mine after mine was abandoned, in fear of piratical forays and owing to constant uprisings among the Indians; garrisons were withdrawn and towns deserted, and the once incredibly rich district was left to half-wild negroes and primitive red men. What settlements are there to-day are miserable, squalid holes; the inhabitants are lazy and shiftless, and while Darien’s [[331]]forests are still dense with dyewoods, valuable timber, and medicinal plants, while its rivers still flow over golden sands, and while its mountains still hold fortunes in mineral wealth, it is for the most part an untamed, impenetrable wilderness. [[332]]