[Footnote 2:  A seron is a species of package made and used in Spanish America, consisting of a piece of raw bullock’s hide with the hair on, formed while wet into the shape of a small trunk, and sewed together.  The quantity of dollars taken on this occasion may have been between seventy and eighty thousand.—­E.]

We met with very important intelligence 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 intimated the possibility of some part of our squadron getting round; and as, from his own experience, he was certain any of our ships that might arrive in the South Seas must be in a very