Town of Sta Pecaque. The town of Santa Pecaque was small, regularly built after the Spanish mode, with a Parade in the middle, and balconies to the houses which fronted the parade. It had two churches. The inhabitants were mostly Spaniards, and their principal occupation was husbandry. It is distant from Compostella about 21 leagues. Compostella itself was at that time reckoned
not to contain more than seventy white families, which made about one-eighth part of its inhabitants.
There were large storehouses, with maize, salt-fish, salt, and sugar, at Santa Pecaque, provisions being kept there for the subsistence of some hundreds of slaves who worked in silver mines not far distant. The chief purpose for which the Cygnet had come so far North on this coast was to get provisions, and here was more than sufficient to supply her wants. For transporting it to their canoes, Swan divided the men into two parties, which it was agreed should go alternately, one party constantly to remain to guard the stores in the town. The afternoon of the first day was passed in taking rest and refreshment, and in collecting horses. 17th. The next morning, fifty-seven men, with a number of horses laden with maize, each man also carrying a small quantity, set out for the canoes, to which they arrived, and safely deposited their burthens. The Spaniards had given some disturbance to the men who guarded the canoes, and had wounded one, on which account they were reinforced with seven men from the carrying party; and in the afternoon, the fifty returned to Santa Pecaque. Only one trip was made in the course of the day.
18th. On the morning of the 18th, the party which had guarded the town the day before, took their turn for carrying. They loaded 24 horses, and every man had his burthen. This day they took a prisoner, who told them, that nearly a thousand men, of all colours, Spaniards, Indians, Negroes, and Mulattoes, were assembled at the town of Santiago, which was only three leagues distant from Santa Pecaque. This information made Captain Swan of opinion, that separating his men was attended with much danger; and he determined that the next morning he would quit the town with the whole party. In the mean time he employed his men to catch as many horses as they could, that when they departed they might carry off a good load.
February 19th. On the 19th, Swan called his men out early, and gave order to prepare for marching; but the greater number refused to alter the mode they had first adopted, and said they would not abandon the town until all the provision in it was conveyed to the canoes. Swan was forced to acquiesce, and to allow one-half of the company to go as before. They had fifty-four horses laden; Swan advised them to tie the horses one to another, and the men to keep in two bodies, twenty-five before, and the same number behind. His directions however were not followed: 'the men would go their own way, every man leading his horse.' The Spaniards had before observed their careless manner of marching, and had prepared their plan of attack for this morning, making choice of the ground they thought most for their advantage, and placing men there in ambush. The Buccaneer convoy had not been gone above a quarter of an hour when those who kept guard in the town, heard the report of guns. Captain Swan called on them to march out to the assistance of their companions; but some even then opposed him, and spoke with contempt of the danger and their enemies, till two horses, saddled, with holsters, and without riders, came galloping into the town frightened, and one had at its side a carabine newly discharged. Buccaneers defeated and slain by the Spaniards. On this additional sign that some event had taken place which it imported them to know, Swan immediately marched out of the town, and all his men followed him. When they came to the place where the engagement had happened, they beheld their companions that had gone forth from the town that morning, every man lying dead in the road, stripped, and so mangled that scarcely any one could be known. This was the most severe defeat the Buccaneers suffered in all their South Sea enterprises.
The party living very little exceeded the number of those
who lay dead before them, yet the Spaniards made no endeavour to interrupt their retreat, either in their march to the canoes, or in their falling down the river, but kept at a distance. 'It is probable,' says Dampier, 'the Spaniards did not cut off so many of our men without loss of many of their own. We lost this day fifty-four Englishmen and nine blacks; and among the slain was my ingenious friend Mr. Ringrose, who wrote that part of the History of the Buccaneers which relates to Captain Sharp. He had engaged in this voyage as supercargo of Captain Swan's ship.'—'Captain Swan had been forewarned by his astrologer of the great danger they were in; and several of the men who went in the first party had opposed the division of their force: some of them foreboded their misfortune, and heard as they lay down in the church in the night, grievous groanings which kept them from sleeping[76].'
Swan and his surviving crew were discouraged from attempting any thing more on the coast of New Galicia, although they had laid up but a small stock of provisions. On the 21st, they sailed from the River of St. Jago for the South Cape of California, where it was their intention to careen the ship; but the wind had settled in the NW quarter, and after struggling against it a fortnight, on the 7th of March, they anchored in a bay at the East end of the middle of the Tres Marias Islands, in eight fathoms clean sand. March. At the Middle Island of the Tres Marias. The next day, they took a birth within a quarter of a mile of the shore; the outer points of the bay bearing ENE and SSW.
None of the Tres Marias Islands were inhabited. Swan named the one at which he had anchored, Prince George's Island. Dampier describes them of moderate height, and the Westernmost Island to be the largest of the three. 'The soil is stony