It was the dry season, so that the river, at times so turbulent, was dwindled to a tenth of its volume. In order that the hard work of hauling boats over shallows might not be made still harder, Morgan gave orders that the men should take but scanty stock of provisions. A few maize cobs and a strip or two of charqui was all the travelling store in the scrips his pilgrims carried. They hoped that they would find fresh food in the Spanish strongholds, or ambuscades, which guarded the passage over the isthmus.
[Illustration: THE ISTHMUS SHOWING MORGAN'S LINE OF ADVANCE]
The company set sail from San Lorenzo on the morning of the 12th (one says the 18th) of January 1671. They numbered in all 1200 men, packed into thirty-two canoas and the five chatas they had taken in the port. His guides went on ahead in one of the chatas, with her guns aboard her and the matches lit, and one Robert Delander, a buccaneer captain, in command. The first day's sailing against a gentle current was pleasant enough. In spite of the heat and the overcrowding of the boats, they made six leagues between dawn and sunset, and anchored at a place called De los Bracos. Here a number of the pirates went ashore to sleep "and stretch their limbs, they being almost crippled with lying too much crowded in the boats." They also foraged up and down for food in the plantations; but the Spaniards had fled with all their stores. It was the first day of the journey over the isthmus, yet many of the men had already come to an end of their provisions. "The greatest part of them" ate nothing all day, nor enjoyed "any other refreshment" than a pipe of tobacco. The next day, "very early in the morning," before the sun rose, they shoved off from the mooring-place. They rowed all day, suffering much from the mosquitoes, but made little progress. The river was fallen very low, so that they were rowing or poling over a series of pools joined by shallow rapids. To each side of them were stretches of black, alluvial mud, already springing green with shrubs and water-plants. Every now and then, as they rowed on, on the dim, sluggish, silent, steaming river, they butted a sleeping alligator as he sunned in the shallows, or were stopped by a fallen tree, brought by the summer floods and left to rot there. At twilight, when the crying of the birds became more intense and the monkeys gathered to their screaming in the treetops, the boats drew up to the bank at a planter's station, or wayside shrine, known as Cruz de Juan Gallego. Here they went ashore to sleep, still gnawed with famine, and faint with the hard day's rowing. The guides told Henry Morgan that after another two leagues they might leave the boats, and push through the woods on foot.