Only the courage and determination of the chiefs induced the men to go on under such severe privations. The fifth day’s journey ended as badly as the previous ones, the only food found being a little flour, fruit, and wine, so small in quantity that Morgan had it distributed among the weaker members of his troop, some of whom were so faint as to seem on the point of death. For the rest of the men there was nothing to eat but leaves and the grass of the meadows.
The feebler men were now put on board the boats, the stronger continuing to travel by land, but very slowly, frequent rests being needed on account of their great exhaustion. It seemed, indeed, as if the expedition would have to be abandoned, when, to their delirious joy, they found a great supply of maize, which the Spaniards by some oversight had abandoned in a granary. Many of them, in their starving condition, devoured this grain raw. Others roasted it wrapped in banana leaves. The supply was soon exhausted, but for a time it gave new vigor to the famished men.
On the following day all the food they found was a sack of bread and some cats and dogs, all of which were greedily devoured; and farther on, at the town of Cruces, the head of navigation on the Chagres, a number of vessels of wine were discovered. This they hastily drank, with the result that all the drinkers fell ill and fancied they were poisoned. Their illness, however, was merely the natural effect of hasty drinking in their exhausted state, and soon left them.
At this point a number of the men were sent back with the boats to where the ships had been left, the force that continued the march amounting to eleven hundred. With these the journey proceeded, the principal adventure being an attack by a large body of Indians, who opposed the invaders with much valor, only retreating when their chief was killed.
About noon of the ninth day a steep hill was ascended, from whose summit, to their delight, the buccaneers beheld the distant Pacific. But what gave them much livelier joy was to see, in a valley below them, a great herd of bulls, cows, horses, and asses, under the care of some Spaniards, who took to flight the moment they saw the formidable force of invaders. Only an utter lack of judgment, or the wildness of panic in the Spaniards, could have induced them to leave this prey to their nearly starved foes. It was an oversight which was to prove fatal to them. Then was the time to attack instead of to feed their ruthless enemies.