Lionel Wafer was a Welsh

Welsh people

The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...

 explorer, buccaneer

Buccaneer

The buccaneers were privateers who attacked Spanish shipping in the Caribbean Sea during the late 17th century.The term buccaneer is now used generally as a synonym for pirate...

 and privateer

Privateer

A privateer is a private person or ship authorized by a government by letters of marque to attack foreign shipping during wartime. Privateering was a way of mobilizing armed ships and sailors without having to spend public money or commit naval officers...

.

A ship's surgeon

Surgeon

In medicine, a surgeon is a specialist in surgery. Surgery is a broad category of invasive medical treatment that involves the cutting of a body, whether human or animal, for a specific reason such as the removal of diseased tissue or to repair a tear or breakage...

, Wafer made several voyages to the South Seas

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

 and visited the Malay archipelago

Malay Archipelago

The Malay Archipelago refers to the archipelago between mainland Southeastern Asia and Australia. The name was derived from the anachronistic concept of a Malay race....

 in 1676. The following year he settled in Jamaica to practise his profession. In 1679, however, two noted buccaneers named Cook and Linen convinced him to become a surgeon for their fleet.

In 1680, Wafer met William Dampier

William Dampier

William Dampier was an English buccaneer, sea captain, author and scientific observer...

 at Cartagena

Cartagena, Colombia

Cartagena de Indias , is a large Caribbean beach resort city on the northern coast of Colombia in the Caribbean Coast Region and capital of Bolívar Department...

 and joined in a privateering venture under the leadership of Bartholomew Sharp

Bartholomew Sharp

Bartholomew Sharp an English buccaneer whose pirate career lasted only three years . His flagship was the Trinity....

.

After a quarrel during an arduous overland journey, Wafer was marooned

Marooning

Marooning is the intentional leaving of someone in a remote area, such as an uninhabited island. The word appears in writing in approximately 1709, and is derived from the term maroon, a word for a fugitive slave, which could be a corruption of Spanish cimarrón, meaning a household animal who has...

 with four others in the Isthmus of Darien, where he stayed with the Cuna Indians. He spent his time gathering information about their culture, including their shamanism

Shamanism

Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. To quote Eliade: "A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = technique of ecstasy." Shamanism encompasses the...

 and a short vocabulary of their language. He also studied the natural history of the isthmus. The following year later, Wafer left the Indians, promising to return and marry the chief's sister and bring back dogs from England. He fooled the buccaneers at first as he was dressed as an Indian, wearing body-paint and ornamented with a nose-ring. It took them some time to recognise him.

Wafer reunited with Dampier, and after privateering with him on the Spanish Main

Spanish Main

In the days of the Spanish New World Empire, the mainland of the American continent enclosing the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico was referred to as the Spanish Main. It included present-day Florida, the east shore of the Gulf of Mexico in Texas, Mexico, Central America and the north coast of...

 until 1688, he settled in Philadelphia.

By 1690 Wafer was back in England. In 1695 he published A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America, describing his adventures. It was translated into French (1706), German (1759), and Swedish (1789).

The Darien Company hired him as an adviser when it was planning its settlement on the isthmus

Darién scheme

The Darién scheme was an unsuccessful attempt by the Kingdom of Scotland to become a world trading nation by establishing a colony called "New Caledonia" on the Isthmus of Panama in the late 1690s...

in 1698.

He died in London in 1705.

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