immediately carried on shore for interment, under a guard of twelve
armed men. While the people were digging his grave, they were joined by
three Spanish Indians, who asked many questions, and were at length
seized, though one of them afterwards escaped. 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 b