den with sugar and other goods to the value of
80,000 crowns. The Spanish vice-admiral and two other galleons gave
chase, but without success, for the wind was against them. The whole
action lasted only half an hour.[31]

The Spanish ships of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were
notoriously clumsy and unseaworthy. With short keel and towering poop
and forecastle they were an easy prey for the long, low, close-sailing
sloops and barques of the buccaneers. But this was not their only
weakness. Although the king expressly prohibited the loading of
merchandise on the galleons except on the king's account, this rule was
often broken for the private profit of the captain, the sailors, and
even of the general. The men-of-war, indeed, were sometimes so
embarrassed with goods and passengers that it was scarcely possible to
defend them when attacked. The galleon which bore the general's flag had
often as many as 700 souls, crew, marines and passengers, on board, and
the same number were crowded upon those carrying the vice-admiral and
the pilot. Ship-masters frequently hired guns, anchors, cables, and
stores to make up the required equipment, and men to fill up the
muster-rolls, against the time when the "visitadors" came on board to
make their official inspection, getting rid of the stores and men
immediately afterward. Merchant ships were armed with such feeble crews,
owing to the excessive crowding, that it was all they could do to
withstand the least spell of bad weather, let alone outman[oe]uvre a
swift-sailing buccaneer.[32]

By Spanish law strangers were forbidden to resort to, or reside in, the
Indies without express permission of the king. By law, moreover, they
might not trade with the Indies from Spain, either on their own account
or through the intermediary of a Spaniard, and they were forbidden even
to associate with those engaged in such a trade. Colonists were
stringently enjoined from having anything to do with them. In 1569 an
order was issued for the seizure of all goods sent to the colonies on
the account of foreigners, and a royal _cedula_ of 1614 decreed the
penalty of death and confiscation upon any who connived at the
participation of foreigners in Spanish colonial commerce.[33] It was
impossible, however, to maintain so complete an exclusion when the
products of Spain fell far short of supplying the needs of the
colonists. Foreign merchants were bound to have a hand in this traffic,
and the Spani