Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/458

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438
OFFICIAL VISIT
[CH. XXXII.

We understood that early in the present year, between seventy and eighty of them had been hung at Jamaica; but however laudable have been the exertions of his Majesty's vessels in their endeavours to suppress them, much yet remains to be done. It is only the Spaniards who allow of and harbour them in their territory. In the bay of Matanzas, to the east of the Havannah, and in various other parts of the Spanish dominions it is quite notorious that the authorities are in league with the pirates and share their nefarious gains.

On the 7th September we had made one fifth of the passage, dead reckoning; and the sailors were grumbling about shortness of provisions and the total consumption of the grog. I had given them the last bottle of brandy on the 1st of the month, and shared with them my live stock; of which there remained at present two goats and one pig—one pig we had already killed, and two others were washed overboard in the storm at Ambergris Quay. The feel-