The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, Commonly Called Colonel Jack

by Daniel Defoe

After above five weeks’ retreat of this kind, he had good intelligence of the fate of the sloop, viz., that the two frigates and a sloop had chased her till she ran on ground near the fort of Pensacola; that they saw her stranded and broke in pieces by the force of the waves, the men making their escape in their boat. This news was brought, it seems, by the said frigates to La Vera Cruz, where my friend went on purpose to be fully informed, and received the account from one of the captains of the frigates, and discoursed with him at large about it.

I was better pleased with the loss of the sloop and all my cargo, the men being got on shore and escaping, than I should have been with the saving the whole cargo, if the men had fallen into the hands of the Spaniards; for now I was safe, whereas then, it being supposed they would have been forced to some discovery about me, I must have fled, and should have found it very difficult to have made my escape, even with all that my friends could have done for me too.

But now I was perfectly easy, and my friend, who thought confining me at the house in the vale no longer needful, brought me publicly home to his dwelling-house, as a merchant come from Old Spain by the last galleons, and who, having been at Mexico, was come to reside with him.

Here I was dressed like a Spaniard of the better sort, had three negroes to attend me, and was called Don Ferdinand de Villa Moresa, in Castilia Feja—that is to say, in Old Castile.

Here I had nothing to do but to walk about and ride out into the woods, and come home again to enjoy the pleasantest and most agreeable retirement in the world; for certainly no men in the world live in such splendour and wallow in such immense treasures as the merchants of this place.

They live, as I have said, in a kind of country retreat at their villas, or, as we would call them in Virginia, their plantations, and, as they do call them, their ingenios, where they make their indigo and their sugars. But they have also houses and warehouses at Vera Cruz, where they go twice a year, when the galleons arrive from Old Spain, and when those galleons relade for their return. And it was surprising to me, when I went to La Vera Cruz with them, to see what prodigious consignments they had from their correspondents in Old Spain, and with what despatch they managed them; for no sooner were the cases, packs, and bales of European goods brought into their warehouses but they were opened and repacked by porters and packers of their own—that is to say, negroes and Indian servants—and being made up into new bales and separate parcels, were all despatched again by horses for Mexico, and directed to their several merchants there, and the remainder carried home, as above, to the ingenio where they lived, which was near thirty English miles from Vera Cruz, so that in about twenty days their warehouses were again entirely free. At La Vera Cruz, all their business was over there, and they and all their servants retired; for they stayed no longer there than needs must, because of the unhealthiness of the air.

After the goods were thus despatched, it was equally surprising to see how soon, and with what exactness, the merchants of Mexico to whom those cargoes were separately consigned made the return, and how it came all in silver or in gold, so that their warehouses in a few months were piled up, even to the ceiling, with chests of pieces of eight and with bars of silver.

It is impossible to describe in the narrow compass of this work with what exactness and order, and yet with how little hurry, and not the least confusion, everything was done, and how soon a weight of business of such importance and value was negotiated and finished, the goods repacked, invoices made, and everything despatched and gone; so that in about five weeks all the goods they had received from Europe by the galleons were disposed of and entered in their journals to the proper account of their merchant to whom they were respectively consigned; from thence they had book-keepers who drew out the invoices and wrote the letters, which the merchant himself only read over and signed, and then other hands copied all again into other books.

I can give no estimate of the value of the several consignments they received by that flota; but I remember that, when the galleons went back, they shipped on board, at several times, one million three hundred thousand pieces of eight in specie, besides a hundred and eighty bales or bags of cochineal and about three hundred bales of indigo; but they were so modest that they said this was for themselves and their friends. That is to say, the several merchants of Mexico consigned large quantities of bullion to them, to ship on board and consign according to their order; but then I know also that, for all that, they were allowed commission, so that their gain was very considerable even that way also.

I had been with them at La Vera Cruz, and came back again before we came to an account for the goods which I had brought on shore in the twenty-one bales, which, by the account we brought them to (leaving a piece of everything to be governed by our last market), amounted to eight thousand five hundred and seventy pieces of eight, all which money my friend—for so I must now call him—brought me in specie, and caused his negroes to pile them up in one corner of my apartment; so that I was indeed still very rich, all things considered.