CHAPTER II.

MANNERS OF THE HUNTERS.

Derivation of the words Buccaneer and Flibustier--The three

classes--Dress of the hunters--West Indian scenery--Method of

hunting--Wild dogs--Anecdotes--Wild oxen, wild boars, and wild

horses--Buccaneer food--Cow killing--Spanish

method--Amusements--Duels--Adventures with the Spanish militia--The

hunters driven to sea--The _engages_, or apprentices--Hide

curing--Hardships of the bush life--The planter's

_engages_--Cruelties of planters--The _matelotage_--Huts--Food.

The hunters of the wild cattle in the savannahs of Hispaniola were known

under the designation of Buccaneers as early as the year 1630.

They derived this name from _boucan_,[1] an old Indian word which their

luckless predecessors, the Caribs, gave to the hut in which they smoked

the flesh of the oxen killed in hunting, or not unfrequently the limbs

of their persecutors the Spaniards. They applied the same term, from the

poverty of an undeveloped language, to the _barbecue_, or square wooden

frame upon which the meat was dried. In course of time this hunters'

food became known as _viande boucanee_, and the hunters themselves

gradually assumed the name of Buccaneers.

[1] Charlevoix's "Histoire de l'Ile Espagnole," p. 6, vol. ii

Their second title of Flibustiers was a mere corruption of the English

word freebooters--a German term, imported into England during the Low

Country wars of Elizabeth's reign. It has been erroneously traced to the

Dutch word _flyboat_; but the Jesuit traveller, Charlevoix, asserts

that, in fact, this species of craft derived its title from being first

used by the Flibustiers, and not from its swiftness. This, however, is

evidently a mistake, as Drayton and Hakluyt use the word; and it seems

to be of even earlier standing in the French language. The derivation

from the English word freebooter is at once seen when the _s_ in

Flibu_s_tier becomes lost in pronunciation.

In 1630, a party of French colonists, who had failed in an attack on St.

Christopher's, finding, as we have shown, Hispaniola almost deserted by

the Spaniards, who neglected the Antilles to push their conquests on the

mainland, landed on the south side and formed a settlement, discovering

the woods and the plains to be teeming with wild oxen and wild hogs. The

Dutch merchants promised to supply them with every necessary, and to

receive the hides and tallow that they collected in exchange for lead,

powder, and brandy. These first settlers were chiefly Normans, and the

first trading vessels that visited the coast were from Dieppe.

The origin of the Buccaneers, or hunters, and the Flibustiers, or sea

rovers, as the Dutch called them, was contemporaneous. From the very

beginning many grew weary of the chase and became corsairs, at first

turning their arms against all nations but their own, but latterly, as

strict privateersmen, revenging their injuries only on the Spaniards,

with whom France was frequently at war, and generally under the

authority of regular or forged commissions obtained from the Governor of

St. Domingo or some other French settlement. Between the Buccaneers and

Flibustiers no impassable line was drawn; to chase the wild ox or the

Spaniard was the same to the greater part of the colonists, and on sea

or land the hunter's musket was an equally deadly weapon.

Two years after the French refugees from St. Christopher's had landed on

the half-deserted shores of Hispaniola, the Flibustiers seized the small

adjoining island of Tortuga, attracted by its safe and well-defended

harbour, its fertility, and the strength of its natural defences. The

French and English colonists of St. Christopher's began now to cultivate

the small plantations round the harbour, encouraged by the number of

French trading vessels that visited it, and by the riches that the

Flibustiers captured from the Spaniards. These vessels brought over

young men from France to be bound to the planters for three years as

_engages_, by a contract that legalized the transitory slavery.

There were thus at once established four classes of men--_Buccaneers_,

or hunters; _planters_, or inhabitants; _engages_, who were apprenticed

to either the one or the other; and _sea-rovers_. They governed

themselves by a sort of democratic compact--each inhabitant being

monarch in his own plantation, and every Flibustier king on his own

deck. But the latter was not unfrequently deposed by his crew; and the

former, if cruel to his _engages_, was compelled to submit to the French

governor's interference. Before giving any history of the various

revolutions in Tortuga, or the wars of the Spaniards in Hispaniola, we

will describe the manners of each of the three classes we have

mentioned.

And first of the Buccaneers, or hunters, of Hispaniola.

These wild men fed on the bodies of the cattle they killed in hunting,

and by selling their hides and tallow obtained money enough to buy the

necessaries and even the luxuries of life,--for the gambling table and

the debauch. While the Flibustiers called each other "brothers of the

coast," the Buccaneers were included in the generic term "_gens de la

cote_," and in time the names of Buccaneer and Flibustier were used

indiscriminately.

The hunter's dress consisted of a plain shirt, or blouse (Du Tertre

calls it a sack), belted at the waist with a bit of green hide. It was

soon dyed a dull purple with the blood of the wild bull, and was always

smeared with grease. "When they returned from the chase to the boucan,"

says the above-named writer, "you would say that these are the butcher's

vilest servants, who have been eight days in the slaughterhouse without

washing." As they frequently carried the meat home by cutting a hole in

the centre, and thrusting their heads through it, we may imagine the

cannibals that they must have looked. They wore drawers, or frequently

only tight mocassins, reaching to the knee; their sandals were of bull's

hide or hog skin, fastened with leather laces.

In Oexmelin's _Histoire des Aventuriers_, the hunter is represented with

bare feet, but this could not have been usual, when we remember the

danger of chigoes, snakes, and scorpions, not to speak of prickly pear

coverts and thorny brakes. From their leather waist belt hung a short,

heavy _machete_ or sabre, and an alligator skin case of Dutch hunting

knives. On their heads they wore a leather skull-cap, shaped like our

modern jockey's, with a peak in front. They wore their hair falling

wildly on their shoulders, and their huge beards increased the ferocity

of their appearance. Oexmelin particularly mentions the beard, although

no existing engraving of the Buccaneer chiefs represents them with this

grim ornament. According to Charlevoix, some of them wore a shirt, and

over this a sort of brewer's apron, or coarse sacking tunic, open at the

sides. From this shirt being always stained with blood, perhaps

sometimes purposely dipped into it, the Abbe Reynal supposes that such a

shirt was the necessary dress of the Buccaneer. Oexmelin says that as his

vessel approached St. Domingo, "a Buccaneers' canoe came off with six

men at the paddles, whose appearance excited the astonishment of all

those on board, who had never before been out of France. They wore a

small linen tunic and short drawers, reaching only half down the thigh.

It required one to look close to see if the shirt was linen or not, so

stained was it with the blood which had dripped from the animals they

kill and carry home. All of them had large beards, and carried at their

girdle a case of cayman skin, in which were four knives and a bayonet."

Like the Canadian trappers, or, indeed, sportsmen in general, they were

peculiarly careful of their muskets, which were made expressly for them

in France, the best makers being Brachie of Dieppe, and Gelu of Nantes.

These guns were about four feet and a half long, and were known

everywhere as "Buccaneering pieces." The stocks were square and heavy,

with a hollow for the shoulder, and they were all made of the same

calibre, single barrel, and carrying balls sixteen to the pound. Every

hunter took with him fifteen or twenty pounds of powder, the best of

which came from Cherbourg. They kept it in waxed calabashes to secure it

from the damp, having no shelter or hut that would keep out the West

Indian rains. Their bullet pouch and powder horn hung on either side,

and their small tents they carried, rolled up tight like bandoliers, at

their waist, for they slept wherever they halted, and generally in their

clothes.

We have no room and no colours bright enough to paint the chief features

of the Indian woods, the cloven cherry, that resembles the arbutus, the

cocoa with its purple pods, the red _bois immortel_, the stunted bastard

cedar, the logwood with its sweet blossom and hawthorn-like leaf, the

cashew with its golden fruit, the oleander, the dock-like yam, and the

calabash tree.

What Hesperian orchards are those where the citron, lemon, and lime

cling together, and the pine-apple grows in prickly hedges, soft custard

apples hang out their bags of sweetness, and the avocada swings its

pears big as pumpkins; where the bread-fruit with its gigantic leaves,

the glossy star apple, and the golden shaddock, drop their masses of

foliage among the dewy and fresh underwood of plantains, far below the

tall and graceful cocoa-nut tree.

Michael Scott depicts with photographic exactness and brilliancy every

phase of the West Indian day, and enables us to imagine the light and

shade that surrounded the strange race of whom we write. At daybreak,

the land wind moans and shakes the dew from the feathery palms; the

fireflies grow pale, and fade out one after the other, like the stars;

the deep croaking of the frog ceases, and the lizards and crickets are

silent; the monkeys leave off yelling; the snore of the tree toad and

the wild cry of the tiger-cat are no more heard; but fresh sounds arise,

and the woods thrill with the voices and clatter of an awaking city; the

measured tap of the woodpecker echoes, with the clear, flute-like note

of the pavo del monte, the shriek of the macaw, and the chatter of the

parroquet; the pigeon moans in the inmost forest, and the gabbling

crows croak and scream.

At noon, as the breeze continues, and the sun grows vertical, the

branches grow alive with gleaming lizards and coloured birds, noisy

parrots hop round the wild pine, the cattle retreat beneath the trees

for shelter, to browse the cooler grass, and the condouli and passion

flowers of all sizes, from a soup plate to a thumb ring, shut their

blossoms; the very humming-birds cease to drone and buzz round the

orange flowers, and the land-crab is heard rustling among the dry grass.

In the swamps the hot mist rises, and the wild fowl flock to the reeds

and canes in the muddy lagoons, where the strong smell of musk denotes

the lurking alligator; the feathery plumes of the bamboos wave not, and

the cotton tree moves not a limb.

The rainy season brings far different scenes: then the sky grows

suddenly black, the wild ducks fly screaming here and there, the carrion

crows are whirled bodingly about the skies, the smaller birds hurry to

shelter, the mountain clouds bear down upon the valleys, and a low,

rushing sound precedes the rain. The torrents turn brown and earthy, all

nature seems to wait the doom with fear. The low murmur of the

earthquake is still more impressive, with the distant thunder breaking

the deep silence, and the trees bending and groaning though the air is

still. Besides the rains and the earthquakes, the tornadoes are still

more dreadful visitants, when the air in a moment grows full of shivered

branches, shattered roofs, and uptorn canes.

The great features of the West Indian forests are the fireflies and the

monkeys. At night, when the wind is rustling in the dry palm leaves, the

sparkles of green fire break out among the trees like sparks blown from

a thousand torches; the gloom pulses with them as the flame ebbs and

flows, and the planters' chambers are filled with these harmless

incendiaries. The yell of the monkeys at daybreak has been compared to a

devils' holiday, to distant thunder, loose iron bars in a cart in Fleet

Street, bagpipes, and drunken men laughing.

To Coleridge we are indebted for word pictures of the cabbage tree, and

the silk cotton tree with their buttressed trunks; the banyan with its

cloistered arcades; the wild plantain with its immense green leaves rent

in slips, its thick bunches of fruit, and its scarlet pendent seed; the

mangroves, with their branches drooping into the sea; the banana, with

its jointed leaves; the fern trees, twenty feet high; the gold canes, in

arrowy sheaves; and the feathery palms. Nor do we forget the figuera,

the bois le Sueur, or the wild pine burning like a topaz in a calix of

emerald. Beneath the broad roof of creepers, from which the oriole hangs

its hammock nest, grow, in a wild jungle of beauty, the scarlet cordia,

the pink and saffron flower fence, the plumeria, and the white datura.

The flying fish glided by us, says H.N. Coleridge, speaking of the

Indian seas, bonitos and albicores played around the bows, dolphins

gleamed in our wake, ever and anon a shark, and once a great

emerald-coloured whale, kept us company. Elsewhere he describes the

silver strand, fringed with evergreen drooping mangroves, and the long

shrouding avenues of thick leaves that darkly fringe the blue ocean. By

the shore grow the dark and stately manchineel, beautiful but noxious,

the white wood, and the bristling sea-side grape, with its broad leaves

and bunches of pleasant berries. The sea birds skim about the waves, and

the red flamingoes stalk around the sandy shoals, while the alligators

wallow on the mud banks, and the snowy pelicans hold their councils in

solemn stupidity.

Leaving the sea and the shore we wander on into the interior, for the

West Indian vegetation has everywhere a common character, and see

delighted the forest trees growing on the cliffs, knotted and bound

together with luxuriant festoons of evergreen creepers, connecting them

in one vast network of leaves and branches, the wild pine sparkling on

the huge limbs of the wayside trees, beside it the dagger-like Spanish

needle, the quilted pimploe, and the maypole aloe shooting its yellow

flowered crown twenty feet above the traveller, or amid the dark

foliage, twines of purple wreaths or lilac jessamine; and the woods

ringing with the song of birds, interrupted at times by strange shrieks

or moanings of some tropic wanderer; we see with these the snowy

amaryllis, the gorgeous hibiscus with its crown of scarlet, the

quivering limes and dark glossy orange bushes; we rest under the green

tamarind or listen to the mournful creaking of the sand box tree.

The Buccaneers went in pairs, every hunter having his _camerade_ or

_matelot_ (sailor), as well as his _engages_. They had seldom any fixed

habitation, but pitched their tents where the cattle were to be found,

building temporary sheds, thatched with palm leaves, to defend them from

the rain and to lodge their stock of hides till they could barter it

with the next vessel for wine, brandy, linen, arms, powder, or lead.

They would return three leagues from the chase to their huts, laden with

meat and skins, and if they ate in the open country it was always with

their musket cocked and near at hand for fear of surprise. With their

_matelots_ they had everything in common. The chief occupation of these

voluntary outlaws was the chase of the wild ox, that of the wild boar

being at first a mere amusement, or only followed as the means of

procuring a luxurious meal; at a later period, however, many Frenchmen

lived by hunting the hog, whose flesh they boucaned and sold for

exportation, its flavour being superior to that of any other meat.

The Buccaneers sometimes went in companies of ten or twelve, each man

having his Indian attendant besides his apprentices. Before setting out

they arranged a spot for rendezvous in case of attack. If they remained

long in one place, they built thatched sheds under which to pitch their

tents. They rose at daybreak to start for the chase, leaving one of the

band to guard the huts. The masters generally went first and alone

(sometimes the worst shot was left in the tent to cook), and the

_engages_ and the dogs followed; one hound, the _venteur_, went in front

of all, often leading the hunter through wood and over rock where no

path had ever been. When the quarry came in sight the dogs barked round

it and kept it at bay till the hunters could come up and fire. They

generally aimed at the breast of the bull, or tried to hamstring it as

soon as possible. Many hunters ran down the wild cattle in the savannah

and attacked it with their dogs. If only wounded the ox would rush upon

them and gore all he met. But this happened very seldom, for the men

were deadly shots, seldom missed their _coup_, and were always

sufficiently active, if in danger, to climb the tree from behind which

they had fired. The _venteur_ dog had a peculiar short bark by which he

summoned the pack to his aid, and as soon as they heard it the _engages_

rushed to the rescue. When the beast was half flayed, the master took

out the largest bone and sucked the hot marrow, which served him for a

meal, giving a bit also to the _venteur_, but not to any other dogs,

lest they should grow lazy in hunting; but the last lagger in the pack

had sometimes a bit thrown him to incite him to greater exertion. He

then left the _engages_ to carry the skin to the boucan, with a few of

the best joints, giving the rest to the carrion crows, that soon sniffed

out the blood. They continued the chase till each man had killed an ox,

and the last returned home, laden like the rest with a hide and a

portion of raw meat. By this time the first comer had prepared dinner,

roasted some beef, or spitted a whole hog. The tables were soon laid;

they consisted of a flat stone, the fallen trunk of a tree, or a root,

with no cloth, no napkin, no bread, and no wine; pimento and orange

juice were sufficient sauce for hungry men, and a contented mind and a

keen appetite never quarrelled with rude cooking. This monotonous life

was only varied by a conflict with a wounded bull, or a skirmish with

the Spaniards. The grand fete days were when the hunter had collected as

many hides as he had contracted to supply the merchant, and carried them

to Tortuga, to Cape Tiburon, Samana, or St. Domingo, probably to return

in a week's time, weary of drinking or beggared from the gambling table,

tired of civilization, and restless for the chase.

The wild cattle of Hispaniola--the oxen, hogs, horses, and dogs--were

all sprung from the domestic animals originally brought from Spain. The

dogs were introduced into the island to chase the Indians, a cruelty

that even the mild Columbus practised. Esquemeling says, those first

conquerors of the New World made use of dogs "to range and search the

intricate thicket of woods and forests for those their implacable and

unconquerable enemies; thus they forced them to leave their old refuge

and submit to the sword, seeing no milder usage would do it. Hereupon

they killed some of them, and, quartering their bodies, placed them on

the highways, that others might take a warning from such a punishment.

But this severity proved of ill consequence, for, instead of frighting

them and reducing them to civility, they conceived such horror of the

Spaniards that they resolved to detest and fly their sight for ever;

hence the greatest part died in caves and subterraneous places of the

woods and mountains, in which places I myself have often seen great

numbers of human bones. The Spaniards, finding no more Indians to

appear about the woods, turned away a great number of dogs they had in

their houses; and they, finding no masters to keep them, betook

themselves to the woods and fields to hunt for food to preserve their

lives, and by degrees grew wild."

The young of these maroon dogs the hunters were in the habit of bringing

up. When they found a wild bitch with whelps, they generally took away

the puppies and brought them to their tents, preferring them to any

other sort of dog. They seem to have been between a greyhound and a

mastiff. The Dutch writer whom we have just quoted mentions the singular

fact, that these dogs, even in a wild state, retained their acquired

habits. The _venteur_ always led the way, and was allowed to dip the

first fangs into the victim. The wild dogs went in packs of fifty or

eighty, and were so fierce that they would not scruple to attack a whole

herd of wild boars, bringing down two or three at once. They destroyed a

vast number of wild cattle, devouring the young as soon as a mare had

foaled or a cow calved.

"One day," says Esquemeling, "a French Buccaneer showed me a strange

action of this kind. Being in the fields hunting together, we heard a

great noise of dogs which had surrounded a wild boar. Having tame dogs

with us we left them in custody of our servants, being desirous to see

the sport. Hence my companion and I climbed up two several trees, both

for security and prospect. The wild boar, all alone, stood against a

tree, defending himself with his tusks from a great number of dogs that

enclosed him, killed with his teeth and wounded several of them. This

bloody fight continued about an hour, the wild boar meanwhile attempting

many times to escape. At last flying, one dog leaped upon his back; and

the rest of the dogs, perceiving the courage of their companion,

fastened likewise on the boar, and presently killed him. This done, all

of them, the first only excepted, laid themselves down upon the ground

about the prey, and there peaceably continued till he, the first and

most courageous of the troop, had eaten as much as he could. When this

dog had left off, all the rest fell in to take their share till nothing

was left."

In 1668, the Governor of Tortuga, finding these dogs were rendering the

wild boar almost extinct, and alarmed lest the hunters should leave a

place where food was growing scarce, sent to France for poison to

destroy these mastiffs, and placed poisoned horse flesh in the woods.

But although this practice was continued for six months, and an

incredible number were killed, yet the race soon appeared almost as

numerous as before.

The wild horses went in troops of about two or three hundred. They were

awkward and mis-shapen, small and short-bodied, with large heads, long

necks, trailing ears, and thick legs. They had always a leader, and when

they met a hunter, stared at him till he approached within shot, then

gallopped off all together. They were only killed for their skins,

though their flesh was sometimes smoked for the use of the sailors.

These horses were caught by stretching nooses along their tracks, in

which they got entangled by the neck. When taken, they were quickly

tamed by being kept two or three days without food, and were then used

to carry hides. They were good workers, but easily lamed. When a

Buccaneer turned them adrift from want of food to keep them through the

winter, they were known to return ten months after, or, meeting them in

the savannah, begin to whine and caress their old masters, and suffer

themselves to be recaptured. They were also killed for the sake of the

fat about the neck and belly, which the hunters used for lamp oil.

The wild oxen were tame unless wounded, and their hides were generally

from eleven to thirteen feet long. They were very strong and very swift,

in spite of their short and slender legs. In the course of a single

century from their introduction, they had so increased, that the French

Buccaneers, when they landed, seldom went in search of them, but waited

for them near the shore, at the salt pools where they came to drink. The

herds fed at night on the savannahs, and at noon retired to the shelter

of the forests. A wounded bull would often blockade, for four hours, a

tree in which a hunter had taken refuge, bellowing round the trunk and

ploughing at the roots with his horns. The French hunters generally shot

them; but the Spanish "hocksers" rode them down on horseback, and

hamstrung them with a crescent-shaped spear, in form something like a

cheese-knife with a long handle.

The wild boars, when much pressed, adopted the same military stratagem

as the oxen. They threw themselves into the form of a hollow square, the

sows in the rear and the sucking pigs in the middle, the white sabre

tusks of the boars gleaming outwards towards the foe. The dogs always

fastened upon the defenceless sow in preference to the ferocious male,

whom they seldom attacked if it got at bay under a tree, though it might

be alone, glaring before the red jaws of eighty yelping dogs. The wild

boar hunting was less dangerous than that of the wild oxen, and less

profitable. The hogs soon grew scarce, a party of hunters sometimes

killing 100 in a day, and only carrying home three or four of the

fattest. It was not uncommon for solitary hunters or _engages_ who had

lost their way in the woods to amuse themselves by training up the young

hogs they found basking under the trees, and teaching them to track

their own species and pull them down by tugging at their long leathery

ears. Oexmelin, the most intelligent of the few Buccaneer writers,

relates his own success in training four pigs, whom he taught to follow

at his heels like dogs, to play with him, and obey his orders. When they

saw a herd of boars they would run forward and decoy them towards him.

On one occasion, one of them escaped into the plains, but returned three

days after, very complacently heading a herd of hogs, of which his

master and his _matelot_ killed four. It is not many years since that an

English gamekeeper brought up a pig to get his own bread as a pointer.

At first, when the green savannahs were spotted black with cattle, the

hunters were so fastidious that they seldom ate anything but the udders

of cows, considering bull meat too tough. Many a herd was killed, as at

present in Australia or California, for the hide and tallow. If the

first animal killed in the day's hunt was a cow, an _engage_ was

instantly sent to the tent with part of the flesh to cook for the

evening. When the _engages_ had each gone home with his joint and his

hide, the Buccaneer followed with his own load, his dogs, tired and

panting, lagging at his heels. If on his way back he met a boar, or more

oxen, he threw down his fardel, slew a fresh victim, and, flaying it,

hung the hide on a tree out of reach of the wild dogs, and came back for

it on the morrow.

On returning to the boucan, each man set to work to stretch

(_brocheter_) his hide, fastening it tightly out with fourteen wooden

pegs, and rubbing it with ashes and salt mixed together to make it dry

quicker. When this was done, they sat down to partake of the food that

the first comer had by this time cooked. The beef they generally boiled

in the large cauldron which every hunter possessed, drawing it out when

it was done with a wooden skewer. A board served them for a dish. With

a wooden spoon they collected the gravy in a calabash; and into this

they squeezed the juice of a fresh picked lemon, a crushed citron, or a

little pimento, which formed the hunter's favourite sauce, _pimentado_.

This being done with all the care of a Ude, they seized their hunting

knives and wooden skewers, and commenced a solemn attack upon the

ponderous joint. The residue they divided among their dogs. Pere Labat,

an oily Jesuit if we trust to his portrait, describes, with great gusto,

a Buccaneer feast at which he was present, and at which a hog was

roasted whole. The boucaned meat was used in voyages, or when no oxen

could be met with.

When they wanted to boucan a pig, they first flayed it and took out all

the bones. The meat they cut in long slips, which they placed in mats,

and there left it till the next day, when they proceeded to smoke it.

The boucan was a small hut covered close with palm-mats, with a low

entrance, and no chimney or windows: it contained a wooden framework

seven or eight feet high, on which the meat was placed, and underneath

which a charcoal fire was lit. The fire they always fed with the

animal's own skin and bones, which made the smoke thick and full of

ammonia. The volatile salt of the bones being more readily absorbed by

the meat than the mere ligneous acid of wood, the result of this process

was an epicurean mouthful far superior to our Westphalia hams, and more

like our hung beef. Oexmelin waxes quite eloquent in its praise. He says

it was so exquisite that it needed no cooking; its very look, red as a

rose, not to mention its delightful fragrance, tempted the worst

appetite to eat it, whatever it might be. The only misfortune was that

six months after smoking, the meat grew tasteless and unfit for use; but

when fresh, it was thought so wholesome that sick men came from a

distance to live in a hunter's tent and share his food for a time. The

first thing that passengers visiting the West Indies saw was a

Buccaneers' canoe bringing dry meat for sale. The boucaned meat was

sold in bales of sixty pounds' weight, and their pots of tallow were

worth about six pieces of eight.

Labat--no ordinary lover of good cheer, if we may judge from his

portrait, which represents him with cheeks as plump as a pulpit cushion,

and with fat rolls of double chin--describes the Buccaneer fare with

much unction, having gone to a hunter's feast,--a corporeal treat

intended as a slight return for much spiritual food. Each Buccaneer, he

says, had two skewers, made of clean peeled wood, one having two spikes.

The boucan itself was made of four stakes as thick as a man's arm, and

about four feet long, struck in the ground to form a square five feet

long and three feet across. On these forked sticks they placed cross

bars, and upon these the spit, binding them all with withes. The wild

boar, being skinned and gutted, was placed whole upon this spit, the

stomach kept open with a stick. The fire was made of charcoal, and put

on with bark shovels. The interior of the pig was filled with citron

juice, salt, crushed pimento, and pepper; and the flesh was constantly

pricked, so that this juice might penetrate. When the meat was ready,

the cooks fired off a musket twice, to summon the hunters from the

woods, while banana leaves were placed round for plates. If the hunters

brought home any birds, they at once picked them and threw them into the

stomach of the pig, as into a pot. If the hunters were novices, and

brought home nothing, they were sent out again to seek it; if they were

veterans, they were compelled to drink as many cups as the best hunter

had that day killed deer, bulls, or boars. A leaf served to hold the

pimento sauce, and a calabash to drink from, while bananas were their

substitute for bread. The _engages_ waited on their masters, and one of

the penalties for clumsy serving was to be compelled to drink off a

calabash full of sauce.

The English "cow killers" and the French hunters were satisfied with

getting as many hides as they could in the shortest possible time, but

the Spanish _matadores_ gave the trade an air of chivalrous adventure by

rivalling the feats of the Moorish bull-fighters of Granada. They did

not use firearms, but carried lances with a half-moon blade, employing

dogs, and, being generally men of wealth and planters, had servants on

foot to encourage them to the attack. When they tracked an ox in the

woods, they made the hounds drive him out into the prairie, where the

matadors could spur after him, and, wheeling round the monster,

hamstring him or thrust him through with a lance. Dampierre describes

minutely the Spanish mode of hocksing. The horses were trained to

retreat and advance without even a signal. The hocksing-iron, of a

half-moon shape, measuring six inches horizontally, resembled in form a

gardener's turf-cutter. The handle, some fourteen feet long, was held

like a lance over the horse's head, a matador's steed being always known

by its right ear being bent down with the weight of the shaft. The place

to strike the bull was just above the hock; when struck the horse

instantly wheeled to the left, to avoid the charge of the wounded ox,

who soon broke his nearly severed leg, but still limped forward to

avenge himself on his formidable enemy. Then the hockser, riding softly

up, struck him with his iron again, but this time into a fore leg, and

at once laid him prostrate, moaning in terror and in pain. Then,

dismounting, the Spaniard took a sharp dagger and stabbed the beast

behind the horns, severing the spinal marrow. This operation the English

called "polling." The hunter at once remounted, and left his skinners to

remove the hide.

The stately Spaniard delighted in this dangerous chase, with all its

stratagems, surprises, and hair-breadth escapes, when life depended on a

turn of the bridle or the prick of a spur. However pressed for food or

endangered by enemies, he practised it with all the stately ceremonies

of the Madrid arena. The fiery animal, streaming with blood and foam,

bellowing with rage and pain, frequently trampled and gored the dogs and

slew both horse and rider. Oexmelin mentions a bull at Cuba which killed

three horses in the same day, the lucky rider making a solemn pilgrimage

to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadaloupe when he had given his victim

the _coup de grace_.

These Spanish hunters did not rough it like the Buccaneers, and kept

horses to carry their bales. They were particular in their food, and ate

bread and cassava with their beef; drank wine and brandy; and were very

choice in their fruit and preserves. Gay in their dress, they prided

themselves on their white linen. Every separate hunting field had its

own customs. At Campeachy, where the ground was swampy, the

logwood-cutters frequently shot the oxen from a canoe, and were

sometimes pursued by a wounded beast, who would try to sink the boat.

When the woodmen killed a bull, they cut it into quarters, and, taking

out all the bones, cut a hole in the centre of each piece large enough

to pass their heads through, and trudged home with it to their tents on

the shore. If they grew tired or were pursued, they cut off a portion of

the meat and lightened their load.

The Spaniards, less poor, greedy, and thoughtless than the English and

French adventurers, killed only the bulls and old cows, and left the

younger ones to breed. The French were notorious for their wanton waste,

using oxen merely as marks for their bullets, and as utterly indifferent

to the future as Autolycus, who "slept out the thought of it." About

1650 the wild cattle of Jamaica were entirely destroyed, and the

Governor procured a fresh supply from Cuba.

Whenever the oxen grew scarce, they became wilder and more ferocious. In

some places no hunter dared to fire at them if alone, nor ever ventured

into their pastures unattended. All animals grow shy if frequently

pursued, and no fish are so unapproachable as those of a much frequented

stream. Dampierre says that at Beef Island the old bulls who had once

been wounded, when they saw the hunters or heard their muskets, would

instantly form into a square, with their cows in the rear and the calves

in the middle, turning as the hunters turned, and presenting their horns

like a cluster of bayonets. It then became necessary to beat the woods

for stragglers. A beast mortally wounded always made at the hunter; but

if only grazed by the bullet it ran away. A cow was thought to be more

dangerous than a bull, as the former charged with its eyes open, and the

latter with them closed. The danger was often imminent. One of

Dampierre's messmates ventured into the savannah, about a mile from the

huts, and coming within shot of a bull wounded it desperately. The bull,

however, had strength enough to pursue and overtake the logwood-cutter

before he could load again, to trample him, and gore him in the thigh.

Then, faint with loss of blood, it reeled down dead, and fell heavily

beside the bleeding and groaning hunter. His comerade, coming the next

morning to seek for the man, found him weak and almost dying, and,

taking him on his back, bore him to his hut, where he was soon cured.

The rapidity of such cures is peculiar to savages, or men who devote

their whole life to muscular exertion; for the flesh of the South Sea

Islanders is said to close upon a sword as india-rubber does upon the

knife that cuts it. Often, in the heat and excitement of these

pursuits, the solitary hunter, and still more often, from want of

experience and from youthful rashness, the _engage_, would lose his way

in the woods, or, falling into a forest pool, become a prey of the

lurking cayman, if not alarmed by the premonitory odour of musk that

indicated its dangerous vicinity. Nature is full of these warnings: and

the vibrating rattle of the Indian snake has saved the life of many a

Buccaneer.

Besides an unceasing supply of beef on shore, and salted turtle at sea,

the Buccaneers ate the flesh of deer and of peccavy. On the mainland

wild turkeys were always within shot, and fat monkeys and plump parrots

were resources for more hungry and less epicurean men. The rich fruits

of the West Indies, needing no cultivation to improve their flavour,

grew around their huts, and were to be had all the year round for the

picking. The parched hunters delighted in the resinous-flavoured mango

and the luscious guava as much as our modern sailors. In such a country

every one is a vegetarian; for when dinner is over, to be a fruit eater

needs no hermit-like asceticism. The plantain and the yam served them

instead of the bread-fruit of the Pacific, or the potato of Virginia,

and the custard-apple took the place of pastry; but the great dainty

which all their chroniclers mention was the large avocado pear, which

they supposed to be an aphrodisiac. This prodigious lemon-coloured fruit

was allowed to mellow, its soft pulp was then scooped out and beaten up

in a plate with orange and lime juice; but hungry and more impatient men

ate it at once, with a little salt and a roast plantain. A Buccaneer

never touched an unknown fruit till he had seen birds pecking it on the

tree. No bird was ever seen to touch the blooming but poisonous apples

of the manchineel, which few animals but crabs could eat with impunity;

as this tree grew by the sea-shore, even fish were rendered poisonous by

feeding on the fruit that fell into the water. The verified stories of

the manchineel excel the fables related of the upas of Batavia. The very

dew upon its branches poisoned those upon whom it dropped. Esquemeling

says: "One day, being hugely tormented with mosquitoes or gnats, and

being as yet unacquainted with the nature of this tree, I cut a branch

to serve me for a fan, but all my face was swelled the next day, and

filled with blisters as if it were burnt, to such a degree that I was

blind for three days."

The hunters tormented by mosquitoes and sand flies used leafy branches

for fans, and anointed their faces with hog's grease to defend

themselves from the stings. By night in their huts they burned tobacco,

without which smoke they could not have obtained sleep. The mosquitoes

were of all sorts, the buzzing and the silent, the tormentors by day and

night; but they dispersed when the land breeze rose, or whenever the

wind increased. The common mosquito was not visible by day, but at

sunset filled the woods with its ominous humming. Oexmelin describes on

one occasion his lying for eight hours in the water of a brook to escape

their stings; sitting on a stone or on the sand, and keeping his face,

which was above water, covered with leaves to protect him from the fiery

stings.

The Buccaneers made their pens of reeds, and their paper of the leaves

of a peculiar sort of palm, the outer cuticle of which was thin, white,

and soft; their ink was the black juice of the juniper berries, letters

written with which turned white in nine days. They kept harmless snakes

in their houses to feed on the rats and mice, just as we do cats, or the

Copts did the ichneumons. They frequently used a handful of fire-flies

instead of a lantern: Esquemeling, himself a Buccaneer, says, that with

three of these in his cottage at midnight he could see to read in any

book, however small the print.

The Buccaneers carried in their tobacco pouches the horn of an immense

sort of spider, which Esquemeling describes as big as an egg, with feet

as long as a crab, and four black teeth like a rabbit, its bite being

sharp but not venomous. These teeth or horns they used either as

toothpicks or pipe-cleaners; they were supposed to have the property of

preserving the user from toothache. They are described as about two

inches long, black as jet, smooth as glass, sharp as a thorn, and a

little bent at the lower end.

Their favourite toy, the dice, they cut from the white ivory-like teeth

of the sea-horse. Great observers of the use of things, and well

lessoned in the bitter school of experience, they turned every new

natural production they met with to some useful purpose, uniting with

the keen sagacity of the hunter the shrewd instinct of the savage. Their

horsewhips they formed from the skin of the back of a wild bull or

sea-cow. The lashes were made of slips of hide, two or three feet long,

of the full thickness at the bottom, and cut square and tapering to the

point. These thongs they twisted while still green, and then hung them

up in a hut to dry; in a few weeks they shrank and became hard as wood,

and tough as an American cowhide, an Abyssinian scourge, or the

far-famed Russian knout. From the skin of the manitee they cut straps,

which they used in their canoes instead of the ordinary tholes.

The wild boar hunters frequently lived in huts four or five together,

and remained for months, frequently a year, in the same place, supplying

the neighbouring planters by contract. The most perfect equality

reigned between the _matelots_; and if one of them wanted powder or

lead, he took it from the other's store, telling him of the loan, and

repaying it when able.

When a dispute arose between any of them, their associates tried to

reconcile the difference. A dispute about a shooting wager, or the

smallest trifle, might give rise to deadly feuds between such lawless

and vindictive exiles, unaccustomed to control, and ready to resort to

arms. If both still determined to have revenge, the musket was the

impassive arbiter appealed to. The friends of the duellists decided at

what distance the combatants should stand, and made them draw lots for

the first fire. If one fell dead, the bystanders immediately held a sort

of inquest, at which they decided whether he had been fairly dealt with,

and examined the body to see that the death-shot had been fairly fired

in front, and not in a cowardly or treacherous manner, and handled his

musket to see whether it was discharged and had been in good order. A

surgeon then opened the orifice of the wound, and if he decided that

the bullet had entered behind, or much on one side, they declared the

survivor a murderer; Lynch law was proclaimed, they tied the culprit to

a tree, and shot him with their muskets. In Tortuga, or near a town,

this rude justice was never resorted to, and, even in the wilder places,

was soon abandoned as the hunters grew more civilized. These duels

generally took place on the sea beach if the Flibustiers were the

combatants.

As these men took incessant exercise, were indifferent to climate, and

fed chiefly on fresh meat, they enjoyed good health. They were, however,

subject to flying fevers that passed in a day, and which did not confine

them even to their tents.

With the Spanish Lanceros, or Fifties as they were called by the

Buccaneers, the hunters were perpetually at war, their intrepid infantry

being generally successful against the hot charges of these yeomanry of

the savannahs. There were four companies of them in Hispaniola, with a

hundred spearmen in each company; half of these were generally on the

patrol, while the remainder rested, and from their number they derived

their nickname. Their duty was to surprise the isolated hunters, to burn

the stores of hides, make prisoners of the _engages_, and guard the

Spanish settlers against any sudden attack. At other times they were

employed in killing off the herds of wild cattle that furnished the

Buccaneers with food, and drew fresh bands to the plains where they

abounded. In great enterprises the whole corps cried "boot and saddle,"

and they took with them at all times a few muleteers on foot, either to

carry their baggage, or to serve as scouts in the woods, where the

cow-killers built their huts. But, in spite of Negro foragers and Indian

spies, the keener-eyed Buccaneers generally escaped, or, if met with,

broke like raging wolves through their adversaries' toils. Accustomed to

the bush, inured to famine and fatigue, and more indifferent than even

the Spaniards to climate, the Buccaneers were seldom taken prisoners.

Unerring marksmen, with a spice of the wild beast in their blood, they

preferred death to flight or capture.

It is probable that even for this toilsome and dangerous pursuit the

Spaniards easily obtained recruits. Constant sport with the wild cattle,

abundant food, and a spirit of adventure would prove an irresistible

bait to the bravos of Carthagena, or the matadors of Campeachy. The

hangers-on of the wineshops and the pulque drinkers of Mexico would

readily embark in any campaign that would bring them a few pistoles, and

give them good food and gay clothing.

Oexmelin relates several instances of the daring escapes of the Buccaneer

hunters from the blood-thirsting pursuit of the Fifties. It was their

custom, directly that news reached the tents that the Lanceros were out,

to issue an order that the first man who caught sight of the horsemen

should inform the rest, in order to attack the foe by an ambuscade, if

they were too numerous to meet in the open field. The great aim, on the

other hand, of the Lanceros, was to wait for a night of rain and wind,

when the sound of their hoofs could not be heard, and to butcher the

sleepers when their fire-arms were either damp or piled out of reach.

Frequently they surrounded the hunters when heavy after a debauch, and

when even the sentinels were asleep at the tent doors.

The following anecdote conveys some impression of these encounters. A

French Buccaneer going one day into the savannahs to hunt, followed by

his _engage_, was suddenly surrounded by a troop of shouting Lanceros.

He saw at once that the Fifties had at last trapped him. He was

surrounded, and escape from their swift pursuit, with no tree near, was

hopeless. But he would not let hope desert him so long as the spears

were still out of his heart. His _engage_ was as brave as himself, and

both determined to stand at bay and sell their lives dearly. The hunter

of mad oxen, and the tamer of wild horses, need not fear man or devil.

The master and man put themselves back to back, and, laying their common

stock of powder and bullets in their caps between them, prepared for

death. The Spaniards, who only carried lances, kept coursing round them,

afraid to narrow in, or venture within shot, and crying out to them

with threats to surrender. They next offered them quarter, and at last

promised to disarm but not hurt them, saying they were only executing

the orders of their general. The two Frenchmen replied mockingly, that

they would never surrender, and wanted no quarter, and that the first

lancer who approached would pay dear for his visit. The Spaniards still

hovered round, afraid to advance, none of them willing to be the first

victim, or to play the scapegoat for the rest. "C'est le premier pas qui

coute," and the first step they made was backward. After some

consultation at a safe distance, they finally left the Buccaneers still

standing threateningly back to back, and spurred off, half afraid that

the Tartars they had nearly caught might turn the tables, and advance

against them.

The steady persistency of the Buccaneer infantry was generally

victorious over the impetuous but transitory onslaught of the Spanish

cavalry.

Another time a wild Buccaneer while hunting alone was surprised by a

similar party of mounted pikemen. Seeing that there was some distance

between him and the nearest wood, and that his capture was certain, he

bethought himself of the following _ruse_. Putting his gun up to his

shoulder he advanced at a trot, shouting exultingly, "_a moi, a moi!_"

as if he was followed by a band of scattered companions who had been in

search of the Spaniards. The cavaliers, believing at once that they had

fallen into an ambush, took flight, to the joy of the ingenious hunter,

who quickly made his escape, laughing, into the neighbouring covert.

The Spaniards were worn out at last with this border warfare,

unprofitable because it was waged with men who were too poor to reward

the plunderer, and dangerous because fought with every disadvantage of

weapon and situation. In the savannahs the Spaniards were formidable,

but in the woods they became a certain prey to the musketeer. Unable to

drive the plunderers out of the island, the Spaniards at last foolishly

resolved to render the island not worth the plunder. Orders came from

Spain to kill off the wild cattle that Columbus had originally brought

to the island, and particularly round the coast. If the trade with the

French vessels and the barter of hides for brandy could once be

arrested, the hunters would be driven from the woods by starvation, or

perish one by one in their dens. They little thought that this scheme

would succeed, and what would be the consequence of such success. The

hunters turned sea crusaders, and the sea became the savannah where they

sought their human game. Every creek soon thronged with men more deadly

than the Danish Vikinger: wrecked on a habitable shore, they landed as

invaders and turned hunters as before; driven to their boats, they

became again adventurers. In this name and in that of "soldiers of

fortune" they delighted: a more honest and less courteous age would have

termed them pirates. By the year 1686, the change from Buccaneer to

Flibustier had been almost wholly effected.

The Buccaneers' _engages_ led a life very little better than those white

slaves whom the glittering promises of the planters had decoyed from

France. The existence of the former was, however, rendered more bearable

by their variety of adventure, by better food, and by daily recreation.

If all day in the hot sun he had to toil carrying bales of skins from

his master's hut towards the shore, we must remember that American

seamen still work contentedly at the same labour in California for a

sailor's ordinary wages. Mutual danger produced necessarily, except in

the most brutal, a kind of fellowship between the master and the servant

of the boucan. Up at daybreak, the _engage_ sweltered all day through

the bush, groaning beneath his burden of loathsome hides, but the good

meal came before sunset, and then the pipes were lit, and the brandy

went round, and the song was sung, and the tale was told, while the

hunters shot at a mark, or made wagers upon the respective skill of

their _matelots_ or their _engages_.

We hear from Charlevoix, that young prodigals of good family had been

known to prefer the canvas tent to the tapestried wall, and to have

grasped the hunter's musket with the hand that might have wielded the

general's baton or the marshal's staff.

The Buccaneer's life was not one of mere revelry and ease; no luxurious

caves or safe strongholds served at once for their treasure house, their

palace, and their fortress. They were wandering outlaws; hated both by

the Spaniards and the Indians, they ate with a loaded gun within their

reach. The jaguar lurked beside them, the coppersnake glared at them

from his lair. If their foot stumbled, they were gored by the ox or

ripped up by the boar; if they fled they became a prey to the cayman of

the pool; they were swept away as they forded swollen rivers; they were

swallowed up by that dreadful foretype of the Judgment, the earthquake.

The shark and the sea monster swam by their canoe, the carrion crow that

fed to-day upon the carcase they had left, too often fed to-morrow on

the slain hunter. The wildest transitions of safety and danger, plenty

and famine, peace and war, health and sickness, surrounded their daily

life. To-day on the savannah dark with the wild herds, to-morrow

compelled to feast on the flesh of a murdered comerade; to-day

surrounded by revelling friends, to-morrow left alone to die.

The present system of hide curing practised in California seems almost

identical with that employed by the Buccaneers. The following extract

from Dana's "Three Years before the Mast" will convey a correct

impression of what constituted the greater portion of an _engage's_

labour. He describes the shore piled with hides, just out of reach of

the tide; each skin doubled lengthwise in the middle, and nearly as

stiff as a board, and the whole bundles carried down on men's heads from

the place of curing to the stacks. "When the hide is taken from the

bullock, holes are cut round it, near the edge, and it is staked out to

dry, to prevent shrinking. They are then to be cured, and are carried

down to the shore at low tide and made fast in small piles, where they

lie for forty-eight hours, when they are taken out, rolled up in

wheelbarrows, and thrown into vats full of strong brine, where they

remain for forty-eight hours. The sea water only cleans and softens

them, the brine pickles them. They are then removed from the vats, lie

on a platform twenty-four hours, and are then staked out, still wet and

soft; the men go over them with knives, cutting off all remaining pieces

of meat or fat, the ears, and any part that would either prevent the

packing or keeping. A man can clean about twenty-five a-day, keeping at

his work. This cleaning must be done before noon, or they get too dry.

When the sun has been upon them for a few hours they are gone over with

scrapers to remove the fat that the sun brings out; the stakes are then

pulled up and the hides carefully doubled, with the hair outside, and

left to dry. About the middle of the afternoon, they are turned upon the

other side, and at sunset piled up and turned over. The next day they

are spread out and opened again, and at night, if fully dry, are thrown

up on a long horizontal pole, five at a time, and beaten with flails to

get out the dust; thus, being salted, scraped, cleaned, dried, and

beaten, they are stowed away in the warehouses."

The Buccaneer's life was not spent in quaffing sangaree or basking under

orange blossoms--not in smoking beside mountains of flowers, where the

humming-birds fluttered like butterflies, and the lizards flashed across

the sunbeams, shedding jewelled and enchanted light. No Indian in the

mine, no Arab pearl-diver, no worn, pale children at an English factory,

no galley-slave dying at the oar, led such a life as a Buccaneer

_engage_ if bound to a cruel master. Imagine a delicate youth, of good

but poor family, decoyed from a Norman country town by the loud-sounding

promises of a St. Domingo agent, specious as a recruiting sergeant,

voluble as the projector of bubble companies, greedy, plausible, and

lying. He comes out to the El Dorado of his dreams, and is at once taken

to the hut of some rude Buccaneer. The first night is a revel, and his

sleep is golden and full of visions. The spell is broken at daybreak. He

has to carry a load of skins, weighing some twenty-six pounds, three or

four leagues, through brakes of prickly pear and clumps of canes. The

pathless way cannot be traversed at greater speed than about two hours

to a quarter of a league. The sun grows vertical, and he is feverish and

sick at heart. Three years of this purgatory are varied by blows and

curses. The masters too often loaded their servants with blows if they

dared to faint through weakness, hunger, thirst, or fatigue. Some

hunters had the forbearance to rest on a Sunday, induced rather by

languor than by piety; but on these days the _engage_ had to rise as

usual at daybreak, to go out and kill a wild boar for the day's feast.

This was disembowelled and roasted whole, being placed on a spit

supported on two forked stakes, so that the flames might completely

surround the carcase.

Most Buccaneers, even if they rested on Sunday, required their

apprentices to carry the hides down as usual to the place of shipment,

fearing that the Spaniards might choose that very day to burn the huts

and destroy the skins. An _engage_ once complained to his master, and

reminded him that it was not right to work on a Sunday, God himself

having said to the Jews, "Six days shalt thou labour and do all thou

hast to do, for the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God."

"And I tell you," said the scowling Buccaneer, striking the earth with

the butt-end of his gun and roaring out a dreadful curse, "I tell you,

six days shalt thou kill bulls and skin them, and the seventh day thou

shalt carry them down to the beach," beating the daring remonstrant as

he spoke. There was no remedy for these sufferers but patience. Time or

death alone brought relief. Three years soon run out. The mind grows

hardened under suffering as flesh does under the lash. Nature, where she

cannot heal a wound, teaches us where to find unfailing balms. Some grew

reckless to blows, or learned to ingratiate themselves with their

masters by their increasing daring or sturdy industry. An apprentice

whose bullet never flew false, or who could run down the wild ox on the

plain, acquired a fame greater than that of his master. They knew that

in time they themselves would be Buccaneers, and could inflict the very

cruelties from which they now suffered. There were instances where acts

of service to the island, or feats of unusual bravery, raised an

_engage_ of a single year to the full rank of hunter. An apprentice who

could bring in more hides than even his master, must have been too

valuable an acquisition to have been lost by a moment of spleen. That

horrible cases of cruelty did occur, there can be no doubt. There were

no courts of justice in the forest, no stronger arm or wiser head to

which to appeal. But there are always remedies for despair. The loaded

gun was at hand, the knife in the belt, and the poison berries grew by

the hut. There was the unsubdued passion still at liberty in the

heart--there was the will to seize the weapon and the hand to use it.

Providence is fruitful in her remedies of evils, and preserves a balance

which no sovereignty can long disturb. No tyrant can shut up the

volcano, or chain the earthquake. There were always the mountains or the

Spaniards to take refuge amongst, though famine and death dwelt in the

den of the wild beasts, and, if they fled to the Spaniards, they were

often butchered as mere runaway slaves before they could explain, in an

unknown language, that they were not spies. But still the very

impossibility of preventing such escapes must have tended to temper the

severity of the masters. A Flibustier, anxious for a crew, must have

sometimes carried off discontented _engages_ both from the plantations

and the ajoupas. The following story illustrates the social relations of

the Buccaneer master and his servant.

A Buccaneer one day, seeing that his apprentice, newly arrived from

France, could not keep up with him, turned round and struck him over the

head with the lock of his musket. The youth fell, stunned, to the

ground; and the hunter, thinking he was dead, stripped him of his arms,

and left his body where it had fallen and weltering in the blood flowing

from the wound. On his return to his hut, afraid to disclose the truth,

he told his companions that the lad, who had always skulked work, had at

last _marooned_ (a Spanish word applied to runaway negroes). A few

curses were heaped upon him, and no more was thought about his

disappearance.

Soon after the master was out of sight the lad had recovered his senses,

arisen, pale and weak, and attempted to return to the tents.

Unaccustomed to the woods, he lost his way, got off the right track, and

finally gave himself up as doomed to certain death. For some days he

remained wandering round and round the same spot, without either

recovering the path or being able to reach the shore. Hunger did not at

first press him, for he ate the meat with which his master had loaded

him, and ate it raw, not knowing the Indian manner of procuring fire,

and his knives being taken from his belt. Ignorant of what fruits were

safe to eat, where animals fit for food were to be found, and not

knowing how to kill them unarmed, he prepared his mind for the dreadful

and lingering torture of starvation. But he seems to have been of an

ingenious and persevering disposition, and hope did not altogether

forsake him. He had too a companion, for one of his master's dogs,

which had grown fond of his playmate, had remained behind with his body,

licking the hand that had so often fed him.

At first he spent whole days vainly searching for a path. Very often he

climbed up a hill, from which he could see the great, blue, level sea,

stretching out boundless to the horizon, and this renewed his hope. He

looked up, and knew that God's sky was above him, and felt that he might

be still saved. At night he was startled by the screams of the monkeys,

the bellowing of the wild cattle in the distant savannah, or the

unearthly cry of some solitary and unknown bird. Superstition filled him

with fears, and he felt deserted by man, but tormented by the things of

evil. The tracks of the wild cattle led him far astray. Long ere this

his faithful dog, driven by hunger, had procured food for both.

Sometimes beneath the spreading boughs of the river-loving yaco-tree,

they would surprise a basking sow, surrounded by a wandering brood of

voracious sucklings. The dog would cling to the sow, while the boy

aided him in the pursuit of the errant progeny. When they had killed

their prey, they would lie down and share their meal together. The boy

learned to like the raw meat, and the dog had acquired his appetite long

before. Experience soon taught them where to capture their prey in the

quickest and surest manner. He caught the puppies of a wild dog, and

trained them in the chase; and he even taught a young wild boar that he

had caught alive to join in the capture of his own species. After having

led this life for nearly a year, he one day suddenly came upon the

long-lost path, which soon brought him to the sea-shore. His master's

tents were gone, and, from various appearances, seemed to have been long

struck.

The lad, now grown accustomed to his wild life, resigned himself to his

condition, feeling sure that, sooner or later, he should meet with a

party of Buccaneers. His deliverance was not long delayed. After about

twelve months' life in the bush, he fell in with a troop of skinners, to

whom he related his story. They were at first distrustful and alarmed,

as his master had told them that he had _marooned_, and had joined the

Indians. His appearance soon convinced them that his story was true, and

that he was neither a _maroon_ nor a deserter, for he was clothed in the

rags of his _engage's_ shirt and drawers, and had a strip of raw meat

hanging from his girdle. Two tame boars and three dogs followed at his

heels, and refused to leave him. He at once joined his deliverers, who

freed him from all obligations to his master, and gave him arms, powder,

and lead to hunt for himself, and he soon became one of the most

renowned Buccaneers on that coast. It was a long time before he could

eat roasted meat, which not only was distasteful, but made him ill. Long

after, when flaying a wild boar, he was frequently unable to restrain

himself from eating the flesh raw.

When an apprentice had served three years, his master was expected to

give him as a reward a musket, a pound of powder, six pounds of lead,

two shirts, two pairs of drawers, and a cap. The _valets_, as the French

called them, then became comerades, and ceased to be mere _engages_.

They took their own _matelots_, and became, in their turn, Buccaneers.

When they had obtained a sufficient quantity of hides, they either sent

or took them to Tortuga, and brought from thence a young apprentice to

treat him as they themselves had been treated.

The planters' _engages_ led a life more dreadful than that of their

wilder brethren. They were decoyed from France under the same pretences

that once filled our streets with the peasants' sons of Savoy, and the

peasants' daughters from Frankfort, or that now lure children from the

pleasant borders of Como, to pine away in a London den. The want of

sufficient negroes led men to resort to all artifices to obtain

assistance in cultivating the sugar-cane and the tobacco plant. In the

French Antilles they were sold for three years, but often resold in the

interim. Amongst the English they were bound for seven years, and being

occasionally sold again at their own request, before the expiration of

this term, they sometimes served fifteen or twenty years before they

could obtain their freedom. At Jamaica, if a man could not pay even a

small debt at a tavern, he was sold for six or eight months. The

planters had agents in France, England, and other countries, who sent

out these apprentices. They were worked much harder than the slaves,

because their lives, after the expiration of the three years, were of no

consequence to the masters. They were often the victims of a disease

called "coma," the effect of hard usage and climate, and which ended in

idiotcy. Pere Labat remarks the quantity of idiots in the West Indies,

many of whom were dangerous, although allowed to go at liberty. Many of

these worse than slaves were of good birth, tender education, and weak

constitutions, unable to endure even the debilitating climate, and much

less hard labour. Esquemeling, himself originally an _engage_, gives a

most piteous description of their sufferings. Insufficient food and

rest, he says, were the smallest of their sufferings. They were

frequently beaten, and often fell dead at their masters' feet. The men

thus treated died fast: some became dropsical, and others scorbutic. A

man named Bettesea, a merchant of St. Christopher's, was said to have

killed more than a hundred apprentices with blows and stripes. "This

inhumanity," says Esquemeling, "I have _often seen_ with great grief."

The following anecdote of human suffering equals the cruelty of the

Virginian slave owner who threw one slave into the vat of boiling

molasses, and baked another in an oven:--

"A certain planter (of St. Domingo) exercised such cruelty towards one

of his servants as caused him to run away. Having absconded for some

days in the woods, he was at last taken, and brought back to the wicked

Pharaoh. No sooner had he got him but he commanded him to be tied to a

tree; here he gave him so many lashes on his naked back as made his body

run with an entire stream of blood; then, to make the smart of his

wounds the greater, he anointed him with lemon-juice, mixed with salt

and pepper. In this miserable posture he left him tied to the tree for

twenty-four hours, which being past, he began his punishment again,

lashing him as before, so cruelly, that the miserable creature gave up

the ghost, with these dying words, 'I beseech the Almighty God, Creator

of heaven and earth, that He permit the wicked spirit to make thee feel

as many torments before thy death as thou hast caused me to feel before

mine.'

"A strange thing, and worthy of astonishment and admiration: scarce

three or four days were past, after this horrible fact, when the

Almighty Judge, who had heard the cries of that tormented wretch,

suffered the evil one suddenly to possess this barbarous and inhuman

homicide, so that those cruel hands which had punished to death the

innocent servant were the tormentors of his own body, for he beat

himself and tore his flesh after a miserable manner, till he lost the

very shape of a man, not ceasing to howl and cry without any rest by day

or night. Thus he continued raving till he died."

It was by the endurance of such sufferings as these that the early

Buccaneers were hardened into fanatical monsters like Montbars and

Lolonnois.

In the early part of his book, Esquemeling gives us his own history. A

Dutchman by birth, he arrived at Tortuga in 1680, when the French West

India Company, unable to turn the island into a depot, as they had

intended, were selling off their merchandise and their plantations.

Esquemeling, as a bound _engage_ of the company, was sold to the

lieutenant-governor of the island, who treated him with great severity,

and refused to take less than three hundred pieces of eight for his

freedom. Falling sick through vexation and despair, he was sold to a

chirurgeon, for seventy pieces of eight, who proved kind to him, and

finally gave him his liberty for 100 pieces of eight, to be paid after

his first Flibustier trip.

Oexmelin was probably sold almost at the same time as Esquemeling, and

was bought by the commandant-general. Not allowed to pursue his own

profession of a surgeon, he was employed in the most laborious and

painful work, transplanting tobacco, or thinning the young plants,

grating cassava, or pressing the juice from the banana. Overworked and

under fed, associating with slaves, and regarded with hatred and

suspicion, he scarcely received money enough to procure either food or

clothing; his master refusing, even for the inducement of two crowns

a-day, to allow him to practise as physician. A single year of toil at

the plantations threw him into dangerous ill health; for weeks sheltered

only under an outhouse, he was kept alive by the kindness of a black

slave, who brought him daily an egg. Feeble as he was, the great thirst

of a tropical fever compelled him often to rise and drag himself to a

neighbouring tank, that he might drink, even though to drink were to

die. Recovering from this fever, a wolfish hunger was the first sign of

convalescence, but to appease this he had neither food, nor money to buy

it. In this condition he devoured even unripe oranges, green, hard, and

bitter, and resorted to other extremities which he is ashamed to

confess. On one occasion as he was descending from the rock fort, where

his master lived, into the town, he met a friend, the secretary of the

governor, who made him come and dine with him, and gave him a parting

present of a bottle of wine; his master, who had seen what had passed,

by means of a telescope, from his place of vantage, when he returned,

took away the wine, and threw him into a dungeon, accusing him of being

a spy and a traitor. This prison was a cellar, hollowed out of the rock,

full of filth and very dark. In this he swore Oexmelin should rot in

spite of all the governors in the world. Here he was kept for three

days, his feet in irons, fed only by a little bread and water that they

passed to him through an aperture, without even opening the door. One

day, as he lay naked on the stone, and in the dark, he felt a snake

twine itself, cold and slimy, round his body, tightening the folds till

they grew painful, and then sliding off to its hole. On the fourth day

they opened the door and tried to discover if he had told the governor

anything of his master's cruelties; they then set him to dig a plot of

ground near the Fort. Finding himself left unguarded, he resolved to go

and complain to the governor, having first consulted a good old

Capuchin, who took compassion on his pale and famished aspect. The

governor instantly took pity on the wretched runaway, fed and clothed

him, and on his recovery to health placed him with a celebrated surgeon

of the place, who paid his value to his master; the governor being

unwilling to take him into his own service, for fear he should be

accused to the home authorities of taking away slaves from the planters.

The _engages_ were called to their work at daybreak by a shrill whistle

(as the negroes are now by the hoarse conch shell); and the foreman,

allowing any who liked to smoke, led them to their work. This consisted

in felling trees and in picking or lopping tobacco; the driver stood by

them as they dug or picked, and struck those who slackened or rested, as

a captain would do to his galley slaves. Whether sick or well they were

equally obliged to work. They were frequently employed in picking mahot,

a sort of bark used to tie up bales. If they died of fatigue they were

quietly buried, and there an end. Early in the morning one of the band

had to feed the pigs with potato leaves, and prepare his comerades'

dinner. They boiled their meat, putting peas and chopped potatoes into

the water. The cook worked with the gang, but returned a little sooner

to prepare his messmates' dinner, while they were stripping the tobacco

stalk. On feast-days and Sundays they had some indulgences. Oexmelin

relates an instance of a sick slave being employed to turn a grindstone

on which his master was sharpening his axe; being too weak to do it

well, the butcher turned round and clove him down between the shoulders.

The slave fell down, bleeding profusely, and died within two hours; yet

this master was one of a body of planters deemed very indulgent in

comparison to those of some other islands. One planter of St.

Christopher, named Belle Tete, who came from Dieppe, prided himself on

having killed 200 _engages_ who would not work, all of whom, he

declared, died of sheer laziness. When they were in the last

extremities he was in the habit of rubbing their mouths with the yolk of

an egg, in order that he might conscientiously swear he had pressed them

to take food till the very last. Upon a priest one day remonstrating

with him on his brutality, he replied, with perfect effrontery, that he

had once been a bound _engage_, and had never been treated better; that

he had come all the way to that shore to get money, and provided he

could get it and see his children roll in a coach, he did not care

himself if the devil carried him off.

The following anecdote shows what strange modifications of crime this

species of slavery might occasionally produce. There was a rich

inhabitant of Guadaloupe, whose father became so poor that he was

obliged to sell himself as an _engage_, and by a singular coincidence

sold himself to a merchant who happened to be his son's agent. The poor

fellow, finding himself his son's servant, thought himself well off, but

soon found that he was treated as brutally as the rest. The son,

finding the father was old and discontented, and therefore unable to do

much work, and afraid to beat him for the sake of the scandal, sold him

soon after to another planter, who treated him better, gave him more to

eat, and eventually restored him to liberty. Of the ten thousand Scotch

and Irish whom Cromwell sent to the West Indies, many became _engages_,

and finally Buccaneers. Many of the old Puritan soldiers, who had served

in the same wars, were enrolled in the same ranks.

The same principle of brotherhood applied to the planters as to the

ordinary Buccaneers. They called each other _matelots_, and, before

living together, signed a contract by which they agreed to share

everything in common. Each had the power to dispose of his companion's

money and goods, and an agreement signed by one bound the other also. If

the one died, the survivor became the inheritor of the whole, in

preference even to heirs who might come from Europe to claim the share

or attempt to set up a claim. The engagement could be broken up whenever

either wished it, and was often cancelled in a moment of petulance or

of transitory vexation. A third person was sometimes admitted into the

brotherhood on the same conditions. By this singular custom, friendships

were formed as firm as those between a Highlander and his

foster-brother, a Canadian trapper and his comerade, or an English

sailor and his messmate.

The _matelotage_, or _compagnon a bon lot_, being thus formed, the two

planters would go to the governor of the island and request a grant of

land. The officer of the district was then sent to measure out what they

required, of a specified size in a specified spot. The usual grant was a

plot, two hundred feet wide and thirty feet long, as near as possible to

the sea-shore, as being most convenient for the transport of goods, as

well as for the ease of procuring salt water, which they used in

preparing the tobacco leaf. When the sea-shore was covered with cabins

the planters built their huts higher up and four deep, those nearest to

the beach being obliged to allow a roadway to those who were the

furthest back. Their lodges, or _ajoupas_, were raised upon ground

cleared from wood, the thicket being first burnt with the lower branches

of the larger trees. The trunks, too large to remove, were cut down to

within two or three feet of the earth, and allowed to dry and rot for

several summers, and finally also consumed by fire. The savages, on the

other hand, cut down all the trees, let them dry as they fell, and then,

setting the whole alight, reduced it at once to ashes, without any

clearing, lopping, or piling. When about thirty or forty feet of ground

was thus cleared, they began to plant vegetables and cultivate the

ground--peas, potatoes, manioc, banana, and figs being the daily

necessaries of their lives. The banana they planted near rivers, no

planter residing in a place where there was not some well or spring.

Their _casa_, or chief lodge, was supported by posts fifteen or sixteen

feet high, thatched with palm branches, rushes, or sugar-canes, and

walled either with reeds or palisades. Inside, they had _barbecues_, or

forms rising two or three feet from the ground, upon which lay their

mattresses stuffed with banana leaves, and above it the mosquito net of

thin white linen, which they called a _pavillon_. A smaller lodge served

for cooking or for warehousing. Friends and neighbours always assisted

in building these cabins, and were treated in return with brandy by the

planter. The laws of the society obliged the settlers to help each

other, and this kindness was never refused. The same system of mutual

support originated the Scotch penny weddings and the English friendly

custom of ploughing a young farmer's fields.

Now the _ajoupa_ was built, the tobacco ground had to be dug. An

enclosure of two thousand plants required much care, and was obliged to

be kept clean and free from weeds. They had to be lopped, and

transplanted, and irrigated, and finally picked and stored. The people

of Tortuga, the Buccaneers' island, exchanged their tobacco with the

French merchants for hatchets, hoes, knives, sacking, and above all for

wine and brandy.

From potatoes, which the planters ate for breakfast, they extracted

maize, a sour but pleasant beverage. The cassava root they grated for

cakes, making a liquor called _veycon_ of the residue. From the banana

they also extracted an intoxicating drink.

With the wild boar hunters they exchanged tobacco leaf for dried meat,

often paying away at one time two or three hundred weight of tobacco,

and frequently sending a servant of their own to the savannahs to help

the hunter and to supply him with powder and shot.