ota steered north-west, passing Santa Cruz
and Porto Rico on the north, and sighting the little isles of Mona and
Saona, as far as the Bay of Neyba in Hispaniola, where the ships took on
fresh wood and water.[26] Putting to sea again, and circling round Beata
and Alta Vela, the fleet sighted in turn Cape Tiburon, Cape de Cruz, the
Isle of Pines, and Capes Corrientes and San Antonio at the west end of
Cuba. Meanwhile merchant ships had dropped away one by one, sailing to
San Juan de Porto Rico, San Domingo, St. Jago de Cuba and even to
Truxillo and Cavallos in Honduras, to carry orders from Spain to the
governors, receive cargoes of leather, cocoa, etc., and rejoin the Flota
at Havana. From Cape San Antonio to Vera Cruz there was an outside or
winter route and an inside or summer route. The former lay north-west
between the Alacranes and the Negrillos to the Mexican coast about
sixteen leagues north of Vera Cruz, and then down before the wind into
the desired haven. The summer track was much closer to the shore of
Campeache, the fleet threading its way among the cays and shoals, and
approaching Vera Cruz by a channel on the south-east.

If the Flota sailed from Spain in July it generally arrived at Vera Cruz
in the first fifteen days of September, and the ships were at once laid
up until March, when the crews reassembled to careen and refit them. If
the fleet was to return in the same year, however, the exports of New
Spain and adjacent provinces, the goods from China and the Philippines
carried across Mexico from the Pacific port of Acapulco, and the ten or
twelve millions of treasure for the king, were at once put on board and
the ships departed to join the galleons at Havana. Otherwise the fleet
sailed from Vera Cruz in April, and as it lay dead to the leeward of
Cuba, used the northerly winds to about 25 deg., then steered south-east and
reached Havana in eighteen or twenty days. By the beginning of June it
was ready to sail for Spain, where it arrived at the end of July, by the
same course as that followed by the galleons.[27]

We are accustomed to think of Spanish commerce with the Indies as being
made solely by great fleets which sailed yearly from Seville or Cadiz to
Mexico and the Isthmus of Darien. There were, however, always exceptions
to this rule. When, as sometimes happened, the Flota did not sail, two
ships of 600 or 700 tons were sent by the King of Spain to Vera Cruz to
carry the quicksilver necessary fo