igence in this prize, partly from
the prisoners, and partly from letters and papers that fell into
our hands. By these we first learnt with certainty the force and
destination of that squadron which cruised off Madeira at our arrival
there, and had afterwards chased the Pearl in our passage to Port St
Julian. This squadron we now knew to be composed of five large Spanish
ships, commanded by Admiral Pizarro, and purposely fitted out to
traverse our designs, as has been already more amply related in our
third section. We had now the satisfaction to find, that Pizarro,
after his utmost endeavours to get round into these seas, had been
forced back to the Rio Plata, after losing two of his largest
ships; which, considering our great weakness, was no unacceptable
intelligence. We also learnt, that, though an embargo had been laid on
all shipping in the ports of South America, by the viceroy of Peru,
in the preceding month of May, on the supposition that we might then
arrive on the coast, yet it now no longer subsisted: For, on receiving
the account overland of the distresses of Pizarro, part of which they
knew we must also have suffered; and, on hearing nothing of us for
eight months after we were known to have left St Catharines, they were
fully satisfied we must either have been shipwrecked, have perished
at sea, or have been obliged to put back again; as they conceived
it impossible for any ships to have continued at sea for so long an
interval, and therefore, on the application of the merchants, and the
persuasion that we had miscarried, the embargo had been lately taken
off.

This intelligence made us flatter ourselves, as the enemy was still
ignorant of our having got round Cape Horn, and as navigation was
restored, that we might meet with some valuable captures, and might
indemnify ourselves in that way, of our incapacity to attempt any of
their considerable settlements on shore. This much at least we were
certain of, from the information of our prisoners, that, whatever
might be our success in regard to prizes, we had nothing to fear, weak
even as we were, from the Spanish force in that part of the world,
though we discovered that we had been in most imminent peril, when we
least apprehended any, when our other distresses were at the greatest
height. As we found, by letters in the prize, that Pizarro, in the
dispatch he sent by express to the viceroy of Peru overland, after
his own return to the Rio Plata, had intima