r the mines. The metal was divided
between New Spain and Peru by the viceroy at Mexico, who sent _via_
Gautemala the portion intended for the south. These ships, called
"azogues," carried from 2000 to 2500 quintals[28] of silver, and
sometimes convoyed six or seven merchant vessels. From time to time an
isolated ship was also allowed to sail from Spain to Caracas with
licence from the Council of the Indies and the _Contratacion_, paying
the king a duty of five ducats on the ton. It was called the "register
of Caracas," took the same route as the galleons, and returned with one
of the fleets from Havana. Similar vessels traded at Maracaibo, in Porto
Rico and at San Domingo, at Havana and Matanzas in Cuba and at Truxillo
and Campeache.[29] There was always, moreover, a special traffic with
Buenos Ayres. This port was opened to a limited trade in negroes in
1595. In 1602 permission was given to the inhabitants of La Plata to
export for six years the products of their lands to other Spanish
possessions, in exchange for goods of which they had need; and when in
1616 the colonists demanded an indefinite renewal of this privilege, the
sop thrown to them was the bare right of trade to the amount of 100 tons
every three years. Later in the century the Council of the Indies
extended the period to five years, so as not to prejudice the trade of
the galleons.[30]

It was this commerce, which we have noticed at such length, that the
buccaneers of the West Indies in the seventeenth century came to regard
as their legitimate prey. These "corsarios Luteranos," as the Spaniards
sometimes called them, scouring the coast of the Main from Venezuela to
Cartagena, hovering about the broad channel between Cuba and Yucatan, or
prowling in the Florida Straits, became the nightmare of Spanish seamen.
Like a pack of terriers they hung upon the skirts of the great unwieldy
fleets, ready to snap up any unfortunate vessel which a tempest or other
accident had separated from its fellows. When Thomas Gage was sailing in
the galleons from Porto Bello to Cartagena in 1637, four buccaneers
hovering near them carried away two merchant-ships under cover of
darkness. As the same fleet was departing from Havana, just outside the
harbour two strange vessels appeared in their midst, and getting to the
windward of them singled out a Spanish ship which had strayed a short
distance from the rest, suddenly gave her a broadside and made her
yield. The vessel was la