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The extravagance of the naked Indians of South America in decorating themselves is shewn "by a man of large stature gaining with difficulty enough by the labour of a fortnight to procure in exchange the chica necessary to paint himself red." Savages at the present day everywhere deck themselves with plumes, necklaces, armlets, ear-rings, etc. They paint themselves in the most diversified manner.
At the far end was the dangerous Bocca Chica, and some three miles from the city was a larger entrance known as the Bocca Grande.
It may have been a couple of hours later, when Captain Blood, as spruce and cool as if he had just come from a levee, stepped upon the quarter-deck of the Victoriense, to confront M. de Rivarol, still in bedgown and nightcap. "I have to report, M. le Baron, that we are in possession of the fort on Boca Chica.
Just as we sailed from Bocca Chica, on our return to Jamaica, I found myself threatened with the symptoms of this terrible distemper; and knowing very well that I stood no chance for my life, if I should be obliged to be in the cockpit, which by this time was grown intolerable, even to people in health, by reason of the heat and unwholesome smell of decayed provision, I wrote a petition to the captain, representing my case, and humbly imploring his permission to be among the soldiers in the middle deck, for the benefit of the air: but I might have spared myself the trouble; for this humane commander refused my request, and ordered me to continue in the place allotted for the surgeon's mates, or else be contented to be in the hospital, which, by the by, was three degrees more offensive and more suffocating than our own berth below.
And this also they did willingly, because our Captain, according to his custom, contented them for their pains, with such things as they account greatly of; in such sort that they promised, we should have there, of them at any time what we would. There are two entries into this river, of which we entered the western most called Boca Chica.
"I thought I was the only man in the world who knew that crazy old couplet," he confessed, and he chased me around the shack with the rest of the dipperful, to keep from chilling his tummy, he explained. Then Dinky-Dunk and I both like to give pet-names to things. He calls me "Lady Bird" and "Gee-Gee" and sometimes "Honey," and sometimes "Boca Chica" and "Tabby."
And that the reader may know it was not a common occasion that alarmed us thus, I must inform him of the particulars of this dreadful din that astonished us. The fire of the Spaniards proceeded from eighty-four great guns, besides a mortar and small arms, in Bocca Chica; thirty-six in Fort St. Joseph; twenty in two fascine batteries, and four men-of-war, mounting sixty-four guns each.
Dewey entered by the Boca Chica, and we were in Boca Grande. By and by a cluster of roofs, church towers, docks, and arsenals took form against the sea. A little later we could discern the hulks of the Spanish fleet scattered in the water, and several of our own fighting craft at anchor. This was Cavite.
The wind having dropped during the night we could only advance to the island of Arenas where we anchored. I found it was 78 degrees 2 minutes 10 seconds of longitude. The weather became stormy during the night. We again set sail on the morning of the 29th of March, hoping to be able to reach Boca Chica that day.
The passage into the bay on the north side of this island, called the bocca grande, is about half a league broad, and has sufficient water for the largest ships. That on the other side of the island, or bocca chica, is very narrow, and is only navigable by small vessels.
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