Shortly after Morgan's return to Jamaica, a new Governor arrived from England with orders to suppress the gangs of privateers. He had instructions to proclaim a general pardon for all those buccaneers who cared to take advantage of the proclamation within a given time. Those who wished to leave "their naughty way of life" were to be encouraged by grants of land (thirty-five acres apiece), so that they might not starve when they forsook piracy. But this generous offer was merely a lure or bait to bring the buccaneers to port, in order that the Governor might mulct them "the tenths and fifteenths of their booty as the dues of the Crown for granting them commissions." The news of the intended taxation spread abroad among the pirates. They heard, too, that in future they would find no rest in Port Royal; for this new Governor was earnest and diligent in his governorship. They, therefore, kept away from Port Royal, and made Tortuga their rendezvous, gradually allying themselves with the French buccaneers, who had their stronghold there. Some of them, who returned to Port Royal, were brought before the magistrate, and hanged as pirates. Their old captain, Henry Morgan, left his former way of life, and soon afterwards become Governor of Jamaica. He was so very zealous in "discouraging" the buccaneers that the profession gradually lost its standing. The best of its members took to logwood cutting or to planting; the worst kept the seas, like water-Ishmaelites, plundering the ships of all nations save their own. They haunted Tortuga, the keys of Cuba, the creeks and inlets of the coast, and the bays at the western end of Jamaica. They were able to do a great deal of mischief; for there were many of them, and the English Colonial governors could not spare many men-of-war to police the seas. Often the pirates combined and made descents upon the coast as in the past. Henry Morgan's defection did but drive them from their own pleasant haunt, Port Royal. The "free-trade" of buccaneering throve as it had always thriven. But about the time of Morgan's consulship we read of British men-of-war helping to discourage the trade, and thenceforward the buccaneers were without the support of the Colonial Government. Those who sailed the seas after Morgan's time were public enemies, sailing under the shadow of the gallows.
Authorities.—W. Nelson: "Five Years at Panama." P. Mimande: "Souvenirs d'un Echappé de Panama." A. Reclus: "Panama et Darien." A. Radford: "Jottings on Panama." J. de Acosta: "Voyages." S. de Champlain: "Narrative." Cieça de Leon: "Travels." Exquemeling: "Bucaniers of America." Don Perez de la Guzman: "Account of the Sack of Panama."
I am also indebted to friends long resident in the present city of Panama.
CHAPTER XIII
CAPTAIN DAMPIER
Campeachy—Logwood cutting—The march to Santa Maria
William Dampier, a Somersetshire man, who had a taste for roving, went to the West Indies for the first time in 1674, about three years after the sack of Panama. He was "then about twenty-two years old," with several years of sea-service behind him. He had been to the north and to the east, and had smelt powder in a King's ship during the Dutch wars. He came to the West Indies to manage a plantation, working his way "as a Seaman" aboard the ship of one Captain Kent. Planting sugar or cocoa on Sixteen-Mile Walk in an island so full of jolly sinners proved to be but dull work. Dampier tried it for some weeks, and then slipped away to sea with a Port Royal trader, who plied about the coast, fetching the planters' goods to town, and carrying European things, such as cloth, iron, powder, or the like, to the planters' jetties along the coast. That was a more pleasant life, for it took the young man all round the island, to quiet plantings where old buccaneers were at work. These were kindly fellows, always ready for a yarn with the shipmen who brought their goods from Port Royal. They treated the young man well, giving him yams, plantains, and sweet potatoes, with leave to wander through their houses. "But after six or seven Months" Dampier "left that Employ," for he had heard strange tales of the logwood cutters in Campeachy Bay, and longed to see something of them. He, therefore, slipped aboard a small Jamaica vessel which was going to the bay "to load logwood," with two other ships in company. The cargo of his ship "was rum and sugar; a very good Commodity for the Log-wood Cutters, who were then about 250 Men, most English." When they anchored off One Bush Key, by the oyster banks and "low Mangrovy Land," these lumbermen came aboard for drink, buying rum by the gallon or firkin, besides some which had been brewed into punch. They stayed aboard, drinking, till the casks gave out, firing off their small-arms with every health, and making a dreadful racket in that still lagoon, where the silence was seldom so violently broken. The logwood began to come aboard a day or two later; and Dampier sometimes went ashore with the boat for it, on which occasions he visited the huts of the woodmen, and ate some merry meals with them, "with Pork and Pease, or Beef and Dough-boys," not to mention "Drams or Punch."
On the voyage home he was chased by Spaniards, who "fired a Gun" at the ketch, but could not fetch her alongside.