It was needful, in order to their defence, to furnish them with arms and ammunition; so I gave to every man a musket or fuzee, a pistol, and a sword, with cartouches and a good stock of ammunition, powder and shot, with three small barrels of fine powder for store, and lead in proportion; and these things were, indeed, the heaviest part of their baggage, excepting the carpenters' tools and the surgeon's box of medicines.
As for the carrying all these things, they might easily furnish themselves with mules or horses for carriage, while they had money to pay for them, and you may judge how that could be wanting, by what has been said of the country.
We gave them, however, a good large pack of European goods, to make agreeable presents where they received favours; such as black baize, pieces of say, serge, calamanco, drugget, hats and stockings; not forgetting another pack of hatchets, knives, scissors, beads, toys, and such things, to please the natives of the plain country, if they should meet with any.
They desired a few hand granadoes, and we gave them about a dozen; but, as they were heavy, it would have been very troublesome to have carried more.
The Spaniard stayed till all this was done, and till the men were ready to march, and then told us privately, that it would not be proper for him to march along with them, or to appear openly to countenance the enterprise; that my two lieutenants knew the way perfectly well; and that he would go before to his own house, and they should hear of him by the way.
All the mules and horses which he had lent us to bring us back he left with them to carry their baggage, and our new captain had bought six more privately in the country.
The last instructions I gave to our men were, that they should make the best of their way over the country beyond the mountains; that they should take the exact distances of places, and keep a journal of their march, set up crosses and marks at all proper stations; and that they should steer their course as near as they could between the latitude of 40°, where they would enter the country, and the latitude of 45° south, so that they would go an east-south-east course most of the way, and that wherever they made the shore they should seek for a creek or port where the ships might come to an anchor, and look out night and day for the ships; the signals also were agreed on, and they had two dozen of rockets to throw up if they discovered us at sea; they had all necessary instruments for observation also, and perspective glasses, pocket compasses, &c., and thus they set out, October 24th, 1715.
We stayed five days after they began their march, by agreement, that if any opposition should be offered them in the country, or any umbrage taken at their design, so that it could not be executed, we might have notice. But as the Spaniards in the country, who are the most supinely negligent people in the world, had not the least shadow of intelligence, and took them only to be French seamen belonging to the two French ships (such we past for) who had lain there so long, they knew nothing when they went away, much less whither; but, no question, they believed that they were all gone aboard again.
We stayed three days longer than we appointed, and hearing nothing amiss from them, we were satisfied that all was right with them; so we put to sea, standing off to the west, till we were out of sight of the shore, and then we stood away due south, with a fresh gale at north-west-by-west, and fair weather, though the wind chopped about soon after, and we had calms and hot weather that did us no good, but made our men sick and lazy.