CHAP. VII.
Thomas Peche. Attempt of La Sound to cross the Isthmus of America. Voyage of Antonio de Vea to the Strait of Magalhanes. Various Adventures of the Buccaneers, in the West Indies, to the year 1679.
1673. Thomas Peche. In 1673, Thomas Peche, an Englishman, fitted out a ship in England for a piratical voyage to the South Sea against the Spaniards. Previous to this, Peche had been many years a Buccaneer in the West Indies, and therefore his voyage to the South Sea is mentioned as a Buccaneer expedition; but it was in no manner connected with any enterprise in or from the West Indies. The only information we have of Peche's voyage is from a Spanish author, Seixas y Lovera; and by that it may be conjectured that Peche sailed to the Aleutian Isles.[12]
1675. About this time the French West-India Company was suppressed; but another Company was at the same time erected in its stead, and under the unpromising title of Compagnie des Fermiers du domaine d'Occident.
La Sound attempts to cross the Isthmus. Since the plundering of Panama, the imaginations of the Buccaneers had been continually running on expeditions to the South Sea. This was well known to the Spaniards, and produced many forebodings and prophecies, in Spain as well as in Peru, of great invasions both by sea and land. The alarm was increased by an attempt of a French Buccaneer, named La Sound, with a small body of men, to cross over land to the South Sea.
La Sound got no farther than the town of Cheapo, and was driven back. Dampier relates, 'Before my going to the South Seas, I being then on board a privateer off Portobel, we took a packet from Carthagena. We opened a great many of the merchants' letters, several of which informed their correspondents of a certain prophecy that went about Spain that year, the tenor of which was, That the English privateers in the West Indies would that year open a door into the South Seas.'
Voyage of Ant. de Vea to the Strait of Magalhanes. In 1675, it was reported and believed in Peru, that strange ships, supposed to be Pirates, had been seen on the coast of Chili, and it was apprehended that they designed to form an establishment there. In consequence of this information or rumour, the Viceroy sent a ship from Peru, under the command of Don Antonio de Vea, accompanied with small barks as tenders, to reconnoitre the Gulf de la Santissima Trinidada, and to proceed thence to the West entrance of the Strait of Magalhanes. De Vea made examination at those places, and was convinced, from the poverty of the land, that no settlement of Europeans could be maintained there. One of the Spanish barks, with a crew of sixteen men, was wrecked on the small Islands called Evangelists, at the West entrance of the Strait. De Vea returned to Callao in April 1676[13].
1676. The cattle in Hispaniola had again multiplied so much as to revive the business of hunting and the boucan. In 1676, some French who had habitations in the Peninsula of Samana (the NE part of Hispaniola) made incursions on the Spaniards, and plundered one of their villages. Not long afterwards, the Spaniards learnt that in Samana there were only women and children, the men being all absent on the chace; and that it would be easy to surprise not only the habitations, but the hunters also, who had a boucan at a place called the Round Mountain.