staggering through swamps and bogs, and
clambering over rotten tree trunks, and across thorn brakes. They were
wet and wretched and half starved, for their general food was macaw
berries. Sometimes they killed a monkey, once Dampier killed a turkey,
and once they came to a plantain patch where "we fed plentifully on
plantains, both ripe and green." Their clothes were rotted into shreds,
their boots were fallen to pieces, their feet were blistered and raw,
their legs were mere skinless ulcers from the constant soaking. Their
faces were swelled and bloody from the bites of mosquitoes and
wood-ticks. "Not a Man of us but wisht the Journey at an End." Those who
have seen "Bad Lands," or what is called "timber," or what is called
"bush," will know what the party looked like, when, on the twenty-second
day, they saw the North Sea. The day after that they reached the Rio
Conception, and drifted down to the sea in some canoas, to an Indian
village, built on the beach "for the benefit of Trade with the
Privateers." About nine miles away, the Indians told them, was a French
privateer ship, under one Captain Tristian, lying at La Sounds Key. They
stayed a night at the village, and then went aboard the French ship,
which was careened in a creek, with a brushwood fire on her side,
cleaning away her barnacles for a roving cruise. Here they parted with
their Indian guides, not without sorrow, for it is not pleasant to say
"So Long" to folk with whom one has struggled, and lived, and suffered.
"We were resolved to reward them to their hearts' Content," said
Dampier, much as a cowboy, at the end of the trail, will give sugar to
his horse, as he bids him good-bye. The pirates spent their silver
royally, buying red, blue and green beads, and knives, scissors, and
looking-glasses, from the French pirates. They bought up the entire
stock of the French ship, but even then they felt that they had not
rewarded their guides sufficiently. They therefore subscribed a
half-dollar piece each, in coin, as a sort of makeweight. With the toys,
and the bags of silver, the delighted Indians passed back to the
isthmus, where they told golden stories of the kind whites, so that the
Indians of the Main could not do enough for Wafer, and for the four
pirates left behind on the march.

Dampier's party had marched in all 110 miles, over the most damnable and
heart-breaking country which the mind of man can imagine. They had
marched "heavy," with their guns an