the banks.

The cupidity of the freebooters was not abated by the danger of their
situation. They made the most earnest endeavors to preserve their spoil,
and some of the poorer ones even resorted to murder to gain the wealth of
their richer comrades. The dispersion of the flotilla favored this, and
six conspiring Frenchmen hid behind the rocks and attacked and killed five
Englishmen who were known to possess much treasure. Robbing the bodies,
they took to the stream again, leaving the bloody corpses on the bank.
Those who saw them had no time to think of avenging them.

Gradually the river grew wider and deeper and its course less impetuous.
The cascades were all passed, but the stream was obstructed by floating or
anchored tree-trunks, by which many of the piperies were overturned and
their occupants drowned. To avoid this danger the piperies were now
abandoned and the freebooters divided themselves into detachments and
began to build large canoes from the forest trees. Four of these, carrying
one hundred and thirty men, were soon ready and their builders again took
to the stream. Of the fate of the others, who remained behind, no further
account is given by the historian of this adventure.

On the 9th of March, sixty days after their departure from the Pacific,
the adventurers reached the river's mouth, having completed their
remarkable feat of crossing the continent in the face of the most
threatening perils from man and nature. But fortune only partly favored
them, for many had lost all the wealth which they had gathered in their
career of piracy, their very clothes hanging in rags about their limbs.
Some, indeed, had been more fortunate or more adroit in their singular
navigation, but, as a whole, they were a woe-begone and miserable party
when, a few days afterwards, they reached the isle of Perlas. Here were
some friendly vessels, on which they embarked, and near the end of April
they reached the West Indies, with the little that remained of their
plunder.

Such was the end of this remarkable achievement, one which for boldness,
intrepidity, and skill in expedients has few to rival it in the annals of
history, and which, if performed by men of note, instead of by an obscure
band of robbers, would have won for them a high meed of fame.

THE CRUELTY OF THE SPANIARDS TO THE INDIANS.

Never were a people more terribly treated than the natives of America
under the Spanish adventurers. The often told s