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142 upon the town of Porto Bello, where Drake had died, some eighty-three years before. Coxon took 200 men ashore, and marched for three days through swamps and woods, till on the dawn of the fourth he came to the city, and rushed it, as he had rushed Santa Martha. Porto Bello had been squeezed by the velvet glove of Henry Morgan in 1668, but Coxon's men secured booty which "whacked up" to ₤30 or ₤40 a man. This was "good gains," and with this they were content. They rejoined their ships and sailed to Golden Island, a noted haunt of the buccaneers, in the "Samballoes," or Mulatas Islands, where they planned to cross the Isthmus of Darien, to plunder Santa Maria, a gold-mine near the South Seas. When they mustered at Golden Island, Coxon was in a ship of 80 tons, manned by 97 men.

The story of that crossing of the Isthmus has been told by many writers, four of whom were in the ranks at the time. At the landing, Captain John Coxon commanded the fifth and sixth companies, both of which marched under red colours. The colours were probably petticoats, which could afterwards be traded to the natives. Coxon landed