Our Men Retreated Into An
Adjoining Wood, Whence They Kept Up A Heavy Fire On The Spaniards,
Killing Their Leader And Fourteen Troopers, Besides Wounding A Great
Many, While Four Of Our Men Were Slain And Two Wounded.
Owing to this
loss the Spaniards took to flight, and our people were enabled to
re-embark.
This valley is about three leagues broad, and is bounded
towards the inland country by an easy ascent, affording a delightful
prospect of extensive pastures well stored with cattle, interspersed
with pleasant groves of guavas, orange-trees, and lime-trees. The sandy
bay affords a safe landing, and has a fresh-water river, navigable by
boats, but becomes brackish in the end of the dry season, which is in
February, March, and April.
We continued cruizing off Cape Corientes till the 1st January, 1686,
when we sailed for the valley of Valderas, proposing to provide
ourselves with some beef, of which we were in great need. At night we
anchored in sixty fathoms, a mile from shore. On the 7th we landed 240
men, fifty of whom were kept together in a body to watch the motions of
the Spaniards, while the rest were employed in providing cattle. We
killed and salted as much beef as would serve us for two months, and
might have procured a great deal more if we had not run out of salt. By
this time our hopes of meeting the Manilla ship were entirely vanished,
as we concluded she had got past us to the S.E. while we were employed
in procuring provisions, which we afterwards learnt had been the case,
by the information of several prisoners. The loss of this rich prize was
chiefly owing to Captain Townley, who insisted on taking the Lima ship
in the harbour of Acapulco, when we ought to have provided ourselves
with beef and maize, as we might then have done, instead of being now
forced to procure provisions at the critical time of her coming on the
coast. We were likewise deceived by the hope of falling in with rich
towns and mines on this coast, not then knowing that all the wealth of
this country is in the interior. Seeing that we were now entirely
disappointed in our hopes, we parted company, Captain Townley going back
to the S.E. while we in Captain Swan's ship went to the west.
The 7th January we passed point Pontique in lat. 20 deg. 38' N. ten leagues
from Cape Corientes, being the N.W. point of this bay of the valley of
Valderas. A league beyond this point to the W. there are two little
isles called the Pontiques, and beyond these to the north the shore is
rugged for eighteen leagues. The 14th we came to anchor in a channel
between the continent and a small white rocky isle, in lat. 21 deg. 15'. The
20th we anchored a league short of the isles of Chametly, different
from those formerly mentioned under the same name, being six small isles
in lat 28 deg.
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