The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century | Page 7

Payta, was
joined by the Navio del Oro (golden ship), which carried the gold from
the province of Quito and adjacent districts. While the galleons were
approaching Porto Bello the South Sea fleet arrived before Panama, and
the merchants of Chili and Peru began to transfer their merchandise on
mules across the high back of the isthmus.[18]
Then began the famous fair of Porto Bello.[19] The town, whose

permanent population was very small and composed mostly of negroes
and mulattos, was suddenly called upon to accommodate an enormous
crowd of merchants, soldiers and seamen. Food and shelter were to be
had only at extraordinary prices. When Thomas Gage was in Porto
Bello in 1637 he was compelled to pay 120 crowns for a very small,
meanly-furnished room for a fortnight. Merchants gave as much as
1000 crowns for a moderate-sized shop in which to sell their
commodities. Owing to overcrowding, bad sanitation, and an extremely
unhealthy climate, the place became an open grave, ready to swallow
all who resorted there. In 1637, during the fifteen days that the galleons
remained at Porto Bello, 500 men died of sickness. Meanwhile, day by
day, the mule-trains from Panama were winding their way into the
town. Gage in one day counted 200 mules laden with wedges of silver,
which were unloaded in the market-place and permitted to lie about like
heaps of stones in the streets, without causing any fear or suspicion of
being lost.[20] While the treasure of the King of Spain was being
transferred to the galleons in the harbour, the merchants were making
their trade. There was little liberty, however, in commercial
transactions, for the prices were fixed and published beforehand, and
when negotiations began exchange was purely mechanical. The fair,
which was supposed to be open for forty days, was, in later times,
generally completed in ten or twelve. At the beginning of the
eighteenth century the volume of business transacted was estimated to
amount to thirty or forty million pounds sterling.[21]
In view of the prevailing east wind in these regions, and the maze of
reefs, cays and shoals extending far out to sea from the Mosquito Coast,
the galleons, in making their course from Porto Bello to Havana, first
sailed back to Cartagena upon the eastward coast eddy, so as to get well
to windward of Nicaragua before attempting the passage through the
Yucatan Channel.[22] The fleet anchored at Cartagena a second time
for ten or twelve days, where it was rejoined by the patache of
Margarita[23] and by the merchant ships which had been sent to trade
in Terra-Firma. From Cartagena, too, the general sent dispatches to
Spain and to Havana, giving the condition of the vessels, the state of
trade, the day when he expected to sail, and the probable time of
arrival.[24] For when the galleons were in the Indies all ports were

closed by the Spaniards, for fear that precious information of the
whereabouts of the fleet and of the value of its cargo might
inconveniently leak out to their rivals. From Cartagena the course was
north-west past Jamaica and the Caymans to the Isle of Pines, and
thence round Capes Corrientes and San Antonio to Havana. The fleet
generally required about eight days for the journey, and arrived at
Havana late in the summer. Here the galleons refitted and revictualled,
received tobacco, sugar, and other Cuban exports, and if not ordered to
return with the Flota, sailed for Spain no later than the middle of
September. The course for Spain was from Cuba through the Bahama
Channel, north-east between the Virginian Capes and the Bermudas to
about 38°, in order to recover the strong northerly winds, and then east
to the Azores. In winter the galleons sometimes ran south of the
Bermudas, and then slowly worked up to the higher latitude; but in this
case they often either lost some ships on the Bermuda shoals, or to
avoid these slipped too far south, were forced back into the West Indies
and missed their voyage altogether.[25] At the Azores the general,
falling in with his first intelligence from Spain, learned where on the
coast of Europe or Africa he was to sight land; and finally, in the latter
part of October or the beginning of November, he dropped anchor at
San Lucar or in Cadiz harbour.
The Flota or Mexican fleet, consisting in the seventeenth century of
two galleons of 800 or 900 tons and from fifteen to twenty
merchantmen, usually left Cadiz between June and July and wintered in
America; but if it was to return with the galleons from Havana in
September it sailed for the Indies as early as April. The course from
Spain to the Indies was the same as for the fleet of Terra-Firma. From
Deseada or Guadeloupe, however, the