At the time that the English and French buc-
caneers were crossing the isthmiis in great numbers
from the West Indies to the South Sea, two hundred
French buccaneers departed from Hispaniola in a ship
commanded by a Captain Le Sage, intending to go to
the South Sea by the Strait of Magalhanes, but having
chosen a wrong season of the year for that passage,
and finding the winds unfavourable, they stood over to
the coast of Africa, where they continued cruising two
years, and returned to the West Indies with great
booty obtained at the expense of the Hollanders.
The small crew of French buccaneers in the South
Sea who were a part of those who had separated
from Grogniet to cruise near California, and for whom
Le Picard had sought in vain on the coast of New
Spain, were necessitated by the smallness of their
foi-ce and the bad state of their vessel to shelter them-
selves at the Tres Marias Islands in the entrance of
the Gulf of California. It is said that they remained
four years among those islands, at the end of which
time they determined, rather than to pass the rest of
their lives in so desolate a place, to sail southward,
• Theatro Naval, fol. 61, i.
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346 BUCCANEERS OF AMERICA.
