Читать книгу The Life of Sir Henry Morgan. With an account of the English settlement of the island of Jamaica онлайн

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In these closing remarks the governor practically repeated what he had written to Cromwell ten years before. Yet for some reason he deferred transmitting this narrative until the following March. England was in open war with Holland and France, and what course the court of Spain would pursue was yet very uncertain. Its sympathy with the Dutch had been openly manifested in the presence of the English ambassador. Spanish ships of war continued to take English vessels whenever they could and to treat their prisoners as pirates. The restitution of Jamaica was still demanded. English captives confined at Seville as well as in several prisons in Spanish America still clamoured in vain for liberty.

This small band of dauntless adventurers had penetrated the Spanish provinces of Central America for many hundreds of miles, had taken and pillaged three important and populous towns, and had escaped with their spoil, unharmed. The river Tabasco, Dampier stated, was the best known of any flowing into the gulf of Campeachy from southern Mexico. No settlement had then been made upon it lower than twenty-five miles from its mouth, where a fort was built and outposts established with Indians as sentries to guard against surprise. The long roundabout march of the raiders had been made to avoid this post, as Villa de Mosa was situated only twelve miles further up. The produce of the province of Honduras was mainly shipped from Truxillo. That exported from the fruitful plain of Nicaragua was taken to Granada and conveyed down the Desaguadero, or as it is now called, the San Juan river, in small decked boats of thirty tons or less. The ascent of this narrow, shallow, winding stream, even in the coolest weather, was a task of enormous toil and hardship.[100]