groundless, and that they would find a generous enemy in the Commodore, who was not less remarkable for his lenity and humanity than for his resolution and courage.  The passengers who were first sent on board the Centurion informed us that our prize was called “Nuestra Senora del Monte Carmelo”, and was commanded by Don Manuel Zamorra.  Her cargo consisted chiefly of sugar, and great quantities of blue cloth made in the province of Quito, somewhat resembling our English coarse broad-cloths, but inferior to them.  They had, besides, several bales of a coarser sort of cloth, of different colours, called by them Pannia da Tierra, with a few bales of cotton and tobacco, which though strong was not ill-flavoured.  These were the principal goods on board her; but we found, besides, what was to us much more valuable than the rest of the cargo.  This was some trunks of wrought plate, and twenty-three serons of dollars, each weighing upwards of 200 pounds avoirdupois.  The ship’s burthen was about 450 tons; she had fifty-three sailors on board, both whites and blacks; she came from Callao, and had been twenty-seven days at sea before she fell into our hands.  She was bound to the port of Valparaiso, in the kingdom of Chili, and proposed to have returned thence loaded with corn and Chili wine, some gold, dried beef, and small cordage, which at Callao they convert into larger rope.  The prisoners informed us that they left Callao in company with two other ships, which they had parted with some days before, and that at first they conceived us to be one of their company; and by the description we gave them of the ship we had chased from Juan Fernandez, they assured us she was of their number, but that the coming in sight of that island was directly repugnant to the merchants’ instructions, who had expressly forbid it, as knowing that if any English squadron was in those seas, the island of Fernandez was most probably the place of their rendezvous.

And now it is necessary that I should relate the important intelligence which we met with on board her, partly from the information of the prisoners, and partly from the letters and papers which fell into our hands.  We here first learned with certainty the force and destination of that squadron which cruised off Madeira at our arrival there, and afterwards chased the Pearl in our passage to Port St. Julian.  And we had, at the same time, the satisfaction to find that Pizarro, after his utmost endeavours to gain his passage into these seas, had been forced back again into the River of Plate, with the loss of two of his largest ships; and besides this disappointment of Pizarro, which considering our great debility, was no unacceptable intelligence, we further learned that an embargo had been laid upon all shipping in these seas by the Viceroy of Peru, in the month of May preceding, on a supposition that about that time we might arrive upon the coast.  But on the account sent overland by Pizarro of his own distresses, part of which they knew we must have