The Monarchs of the Main. George W. Thornbury

beings, hunters by land and sea, scaring whole fleets with a few canoes, sacking cities with a few grenadiers, devastating every coast from California to Cape Horn, they only needed a common principle of union to have founded an aggressive republic, as wealthy as Venice and as warlike as Carthage. One great mind and the New World had been their own.

      But from the first Providence sowed amongst them the seeds of discord—difference of religion and difference of race. Never settling, their race had its ranks renewed, not by descendants, but by fresh recruits, men with new interests and lower aims. In less than a century the Brotherhood had passed away, their virtues were forgotten and their vices alone remembered.

      The Buccaneers were robbers, yet they sought something beyond gold. Mansvelt took the island of St. Catherine, and planned a republic, and Morgan contemplated the destruction of the Bravo Indians. They were outlaws, and yet religious robbers, yet generous and regardful of the minutest delicacies of honour; lovers of freedom, yet obeying the sternest discipline; cruel, yet tender to their friends.

      All the light and shade of the darkest fiction look poor beside the adventures of these men. Catholics, Protestants, Puritans, gallants, officers, common seamen, farmers' sons, men of rank, hunters, sailors, planters, murderers, fanatics, Creoles, Spaniards, negroes, astrologers, monks, pilots, guides, merchants—all pass before us in a motley and ever-changing masquerade. The backgrounds to these scenes are the wooded shores of the West Indian Islands, woods sparkling at night with fire-flies, broad savannahs dark with wild cattle, the volcanic islands peopled by marooned sailors, stormy promontories, the lonely sand "keys" of Jamaica, and the rocky fastnesses of Tortuga.

CHAPTER I.

       HISTORY OF TORTUGA.

       Table of Contents

      The precursors of the Buccaneers—Description of Tortuga—Origin of the Buccaneers—Conquest of Tortuga by the French—The hunters, planters, and corsairs—Le Basque takes Maracaibo—War in Hispaniola—French West Indian Company buy Tortuga—The Governor, M. D'Ogeron.

      Drake, Cavendish, and Oxenham, indeed all the naval heroes of Elizabeth's reign, were the precursors of the Buccaneers. The captains of those "tall ships" that sailed from Plymouth Sound, and the green nooks of the sunny coast of Devon, to capture stately carracks laden deep with silks, spices, pearls, and precious stones, the treasure of Potosi and Peru, were but Buccaneers under another name, agreeing with them in the great principle of making war on none but Spaniards, but on Spaniards unceasingly. "No peace beyond the line" was the motto on the flag of both Drake and Morgan.

      Sir John Hawkins, who began the slave trade, and who was Drake's earliest patron, took the town of Rio de la Hacha, and struggled desperately with the galleons in the port of St. Juan d'Ulloa. Drake sacked Nombre de Dios, and, passing across the isthmus, stormed Vera Cruz. He destroyed St. Domingo and Carthagena, burnt La Rancheria, and attacked Porto Rico. But still more truly a Buccaneer was John Oxenham, one of Drake's followers, who, cruising about Panama, captured several bullion vessels; but was at last slain, with all his men, having fallen in love with a Spanish captive, and liberated her son, who surprised him with reinforcements from Nombre de Dios. Then came Raleigh, more chivalrous than them all—looser in principle, but wiser in head. He planned an attack on Panama, and ravaged St. Thomas's.

      The first Buccaneers were poor French hunters, who, driven by the Spaniards out of Hispaniola, fled to the neighbouring island of Tortuga, and there settled as planters.

      This Buccaneer colony of Tortuga arose rather by accident than by the design of any one ambitious mind. The French had established a colony in the almost deserted island of St. Christopher's, which had begun to flourish when the Spaniards, alarmed at a hostile power's vicinity to their mines, to which their thoughts then alone tended, put a stop to the prosperity of the French settlements by frequent attacks made by their fleets on their way to New Spain. From the just hatred excited by these unprovoked forays sprang the first impulse of retaliation. These injuries provoked the French, as they had done the Dutch, to fit out privateers. But a still more powerful motive soon became paramount. A spirit of cupidity arose, which was stimulated by the heated imaginations of men poor and angry. Before them lay regions of gold, timidly guarded by a vindictive but feeble enemy; and Spain became to these pioneer settlers what a bedridden miser is to the dreams of a needy bravo.

      The report of the Dutch successes spread through all the ports of France. Sailors were the ready bearers of wild tales they had themselves half invented. Some hardy adventurers of Dieppe fitted out vessels to carry on a warfare that retaliation had now rendered just, war made legal, and chance rendered profitable. The sailor who was to-day munching his onion on the quays of Marseilles might, a few weeks hence, be lord of Carthagena, or rolling in the treasures of a Manilla galleon, clothed in Eastern silks, and delighted with the perfumes of India. Finding their enterprise successful, but St. Kitt's too distant to form a convenient depôt for their booty, they began to look about for some nearer locality. At first they found their return voyages to the West Indian islands frequently occupying three months, which seemed years to men hurrying to store up old plunder, and to sally forth for new. In search of an asylum, these privateersmen touched at Hispaniola, hoping to find some lonely island near its shores; but as soon as they had landed, and saw the great forests full of game, and broad savannahs alive with wild cattle, and finding it abandoned by the Spaniards, and the Indians nearly all dead or emigrated, they determined to settle at a place so full of advantages, where they could revictual their ships, and remain secure and unobserved. The sight of Tortuga, a small neighbouring island, rocky, and yet not without a harbour, convinced them that nature had constructed for their growing empire at once a magazine, a citadel, and a fortress. They had now a sanctuary and a haven, shelter for their booty, and food for their men.

      The Spaniards, although not occupying the island, were anxious that it should not be occupied by others. They had long had a foreboding that this island would become a resort for pirates, and had just garrisoned it with an alfarez and twenty-five men. The French had, however, little difficulty in getting rid of this small force, the soldiers being enraged at finding themselves left by their countrymen, without provisions or reinforcements, upon a barren rock.

      Once masters of the heap of stones, the French began to deliberate by what means they could retain it. The sight of buildings already begun, and the prospect of more food than they could get at St. Christopher's, determined these restless men to settle on the spot they had won. Part of them returned to Hispaniola to kill oxen and boars, and to salt the flesh for those who would remain to plant; and those men who determined to build assured the sailors that stores of dry meat should always be ready to revictual their ships.

      The adventurers, having a nucleus for their operations, began to widen their operations. They became now divided into three distinct classes, always intermingling, and never very definitely divided, but still for the main part separate: the sea rovers, or flibustiers; the planters, or habitans; and the hunters, or buccaneers. For the first class, there were many names: the English, following an Indian word, called them Buccaneers, from the Indian term boucan (dried meat); the Dutch denominated them Zee Roovers, and the French Flibustiers, or Aventuriers. A fourth class, growing by degrees either into the Buccaneers or the planters, were the apprentices, or engagés.

      A few French planters could not have retained the island had not their numbers been swelled by the addition of many English. In a short time, French vessels touched at the island, to trade for the booty that now arrived more frequently, unintermittingly, and in greater quantities. The trade grew less speculative and uncertain. French captains found it profitable to barter not only for hides and meat with the Buccaneers, but with the Flibustiers for silver-plate and pieces of eight. The high prices paid for wine and brandy soon rendered the commerce with Bordeaux a matter worthy the attention of the French Government. In a few days of Buccaneer excess more was spent in barter than could have been realised in months of average traffic with the more cautious.

      The Spaniards, fully alive to the danger of this planter settlement, determined to destroy it at a single blow. The design was easy of accomplishment, for