rds, could not weather
Cape Horn, and was forced back to the Rio Plata, where she was cast
away. As the Spaniards have little or no trade into any of the cold
climates, and are unused to hard work, it is not to be wondered that
they failed on this occasion, especially considering the improper
season of the year. The Biscaneers, indeed, are robust enough fellows;
and had the Leon Franco been manned with them, she had certainly
doubled the cape along with the other three ships; but the Spaniards
in general, since acquiring their possessions in America, have become
so delicate and indolent, that it would be difficult to find an entire
ship's company capable to perform that navigation.

[Footnote 1: No such name occurs, in enumerating the squadron
immediately before--E.]

The vast advantage of the trade of Chili by way of Cape Horn, is so
obvious, that his catholic majesty is obliged by treaty to shut out
all the European nations from it, as well as the English, although
his own subjects make nothing of it, as it very rarely happens that
a Spanish ship ventures to go round Cape Horn. Owing to this, all
European goods sell enormously dear in Chili and Peru; insomuch, that
I have been told at Lima, that they are often at 400 per cent. profit,
and it may be fairly asserted, that the goods carried from France by
Cape Horn are in themselves 50 per cent. better than those sent in
the Cadiz _flota_ to Carthagena and Vera Cruz, because the former are
delivered in six months, fresh and undamaged, while the latter are
generally eighteen months before they reach Chili. In the course of
this trade, the French sold their goods, furnished themselves with
provisions, and got home again, all within twelve or fourteen months.

When Martinet arrived on the coast of Chili in 1717, furnished with a
commission from the king of Spain to take or destroy all the ships of
his countrymen found trading in the South Sea, he soon had sufficient
employment for his squadron and of fourteen ships belonging to St
Malo, then on the coast, only one escaped him, which lay hid in a
landlocked creek unseen till he had gone to leeward. Although in this
he executed the orders of his catholic majesty, and did a material
benefit to the British South Sea company, yet he almost ruined the
trading part of the Creole Spaniards, as hindering the circulation of
money and spoiling business, so that they could not bear the sight
of the French men-of-war, though they lik