The Other Two Were Carried Aboard, And Confessed That They Were Sent As Spies From Nicoya, A Small Mulatto Town Twelve Or Fourteen Leagues From The Cape, And Seated On The Banks Of A River Of The Same Name,[155] Being A Convenient Place For Building And Refitting Ships.

The president of Panama had sent intelligence to this place of the English being in these seas, in consequence

Of which the inhabitants, who mostly subsist by cultivating corn, and by slaughtering great numbers of cattle which feed on their extensive savannas, had sent their ox hides to the North Sea by way of the lake of Nicaragua, as also a certain red wood, called in Jamaica Blood wood, or Nicaragua wood, which is used in dying. These commodities are exchanged for linen and woollen manufactures, and other European goods.

[Footnote 155: There is no river at Niceya, but it is seated on a bay or harbour within the gulf of the same name. - E.]

Learning from their prisoners that there was a large cattle pen at no great distance, where cows and bulls could be had in abundance, and being very desirous of having some fresh beef which had long been very rare among them, twenty-four of the English went ashore in two boats, under the guidance of one of the Indians, and landed about a league from the ships, hauling their boats upon the dry sand. Their guide conducted them to the pen, in a large savanna two miles from the boats, where they found abundance of bulls and cows feeding. Some of the English were for killing three or four immediately, but the rest insisted to wait till morning, and then to kill as many as they needed. On this difference of opinion, Dampier and eleven more thought proper to return aboard that night, expecting to be followed by the rest next day. Hearing nothing of them next day at four p.m. ten men were sent in a canoe to look for them; when they found their comrades on a small rock half a mile from the shore, up to their middles in water, having fled there to escape from forty or fifty Spaniards, well armed with guns and lances, who had burnt their boat. They had taken shelter on this rock at low water, and must have perished in an hour, as it was then flowing tide, if they had not been relieved by the canoe, which brought them safe on board.

On the 19th July, Edward Davis, quarter-master of the Revenge, was elected captain, in the room of Captain Cooke. They sailed next day from Cape Blanco towards Realejo, with a moderate breeze at N. which brought them in three days over against that port, in lat. 12 deg. 26' N. This place is easily discovered from sea, by means of a high-peaked burning mountain about ten miles inland, called by the Spaniards Volcano vejo, or the old volcano, which is so high that it may be seen twenty leagues out at sea, besides which there is no other similar mountain on all that coast.

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