THE GIBRALTAR OF THE BUCCANEERS
One must search far and wide to find a more beautiful stretch of water
than the Bay of Samana. Blue as the azure dome above it, the vast,
lake-like expanse cuts into the very heart of the wondrous island for
over thirty miles. From the lofty, richly forested mountains that hem
it in on the north, to the low, rolling green hills on the south, it
stretches for ten miles, and dotting its placid surface are verdant
wooded isles. Sheltered by the land from all hard winds, deep enough
for the largest ships, protected from the seas and with an area
sufficient to afford anchorage for all the navies of the world and to
spare, Samana Bay has no equal as a natural harbor in all the Antilles,
if, indeed, in the entire world.
Its strategic value is enormous; as a coaling-station and naval base it
is without a peer in the West Indies, and once our Government, alive to
these facts, came very near purchasing it from the Dominicans. But long
before that time the sea-rovers appreciated the manifold advantages of
the bay, and here they came to find a retreat wherein they could and
did hold their own in safety, though surrounded on every hand by their
arch-enemies the Spaniards. Here, almost midway between the shores, a
charmingly beautiful islet, about three miles in length and a mile
wide, juts, a mass of emerald and ivory, above the blue waters; and
here the buccaneers made their headquarters, transforming this Cayo
Levantado, as it is called, into a veritable miniature Gibraltar of
their own. And toward this one-time stronghold of the pirates the
Vigilant rippled, through the waters of the bay that once sheltered
many a buccaneer ship, and upon whose shores the first battle between
the Europeans and the Indians took place.
It was on the borders of a tiny bay that this memorable but
insignificant skirmish occurred which sealed the doom of the red man—a
quiet little cove at the edge of the jungle under the towering green
hills, and still called by the name Columbus bestowed upon it, Golfo de
las Flechas (Bay of the Arrows), in memory of the shower of darts that
the Indians poured upon a landing party of Spaniards. The arrows,
however, rattled harmlessly upon the invaders’ coats of mail, while,
with the answering volley from the armored men, a number of the naked
savages were killed. To-day it is very peaceful, and as wild, as
uninhabited as when Columbus first entered the great bay. Indeed, it is
even more deserted, for the last of the aborigines of the island have
been dead two centuries and more, the Spaniards having waged upon them
a relentless war of extermination, as a penalty for daring to protect
their homes from the white invaders.
Deserted, too, is the little islet The Upraised Cay, to give it a
literal equivalent for its Spanish name, though to the corsairs it was
ever known as Trade Wind Cay. And off its gleaming coral beach the
Vigilant came to rest.
From the schooner’s decks the isle appeared a single rounded hill
sloping gently to east and west, with a stretch of abrupt gray
limestone cliffs along the northern shore and covered with a wealth of
luxuriant vegetation. Before our anchorage a dazzling crescent of white
sand swept from a rocky point to a low cape, and just off the spot
where the snowy beach ended at the headland a bit of detached rock rose
from the sea, a curiously formed islet supporting a mass of tangled
shrubbery and vines and worn by the waves to a remarkable semblance of
a gigantic turtle. Upon the beach the lazy swell curled in translucent
turquoise, and everywhere upon the sand, upon the sea, winging overhead
and perching upon the trees, were countless clumsy pelicans and
fork-tailed frigate-birds.
Here, undisturbed by man,—for the natives have a superstitious fear of
the spot, although they occasionally come here to kill the wild cattle
and goats,—the sea-birds breed by thousands and wheel in endless
circles above the ruins of the buccaneers’ old stronghold. And what a
stronghold it must have been! As I wandered through the thickets and
clambered over the old fortifications I no longer marveled that, from
this vantage-point, the pirates defied the powers of the world and held
it for years despite the efforts of Spain, Britain, France, and Holland
to dislodge them.
Everywhere amid the tangled vines and thorny scrub are great cisterns,
foundations of buildings, water-sheds, and vaults. Along the cliffs are
battlements, embrasures, walls, and loopholes; and leading up the
slopes from the landing-place are long flights of stairs, all hewn and
carved from the solid rock. What herculean labor is here represented!
What unremitting toil of tortured prisoners and slaves! What toll of
blood and suffering and death! Here, side by side with the naked
blacks, grandees and hidalgos cut and hewed the rock to form their
captors’ lair; toiling beneath the blazing sun from dawn to dark;
sweating, half-starved, their backs raw and covered with great welts
from their brutal driver’s lash, their fingers torn and bleeding from
the jagged stone, their faces wan and drawn, their eyes bloodshot and
furtive, their bones aching from fever, and their only hope of
deliverance the death which would be meted out to them as soon as
exhausted muscles and sinews gave way or their work was done.
Centuries have passed since their racked bodies were cast like carrion
into the sea or dumped in a common grave in the sand, but their work
has endured. To-day, flowering vines trail from the loopholes in the
massive battlements the captives chiseled, and great forest trees have
sprung up from crevices among the rocks and slowly but surely have
riven the walls that defied shot and shell. The houses wherein the
buccaneers made merry are roofless and tenanted by land-crabs and
lizards, and the hewn water-tanks from which they filled their casks
ere starting on their forays are choked with fallen leaves, rotting
vegetation, and the gnarled roots of the jungle.
Weird tales the natives of the mainland tell of sights witnessed at
dead of night upon this little isle. With fear-widened eyes, they
whisper of ghostly mail-clad sentinels pacing the old walls, of phantom
ships riding upon the waves off the cay, of blood-curdling shouts,
songs, and curses coming from no mortal throat but echoing across the
bay from this ancient stronghold. Also, fervently crossing themselves
the while, they tell of piercing screams, as of lost souls, heard by
the humble fishermen plying their trade at night upon the bay, and of
mysterious lights, like the flare of torches, that dance and move and
flit among the trees of the cay.
Of course there is many a tale of treasure hidden on the island; of
vast stores of pirate loot secreted in the subterranean caverns and
hewn underground recesses; and one hair-raising story they relate of a
treasure-chest in the sea close to the island’s shores, which is
plainly visible through the transparent water. Many times, if we are to
believe the natives, some unusually brave and covetous man has grappled
for this chest, only to find, when he tediously hauled it to the
surface, that a hideous demon was seated upon it, who grimaced and
leered, and, throwing his slimy, misshapen body upon the terrified man,
carried him to the depths of the sea along with the chest of gold he
guards so well.
And after all, who can say what treasures may not be concealed upon
this Gibraltar of the buccaneers? Countless chests of loot have been
carried from triumphant pirate ships to the strip of white sand upon
the cay. Many a bale of wondrous silk and cloth of gold and velvet
damask has been slashed open with blood-stained cutlasses and flung to
the pirates’ mistresses who swarmed about the incoming ships’ cargoes.
Here, in the shade of the gnarled sea-grape thickets, scores of the
most notorious rascals have lounged and plotted and yarned while
quaffing priceless wines from the holy golden chalices snatched from
profaned altars. Under the very trees that still rear their green
crowns above the ruins the groans of tortured men, the screams of
ravished women, and the drunken shouts of rum-crazed rioters have rent
the air.
As far as is known, no one has ever salvaged any treasure from Trade
Wind Cay. The limestone rock is honeycombed with cavities and caverns
wherein whole ships’ cargoes might be stored and none the wiser. But if
the pirates hid it here, they hid it well indeed, although so
superstitiously afraid of the place are the natives that they would
never dare to search.
But probably the buccaneers never secreted loot upon the isle. Indeed,
from what we know of the lives and characters of these men, it is
pretty safe to assume that they never hid their treasure, but no sooner
put foot on dry land than they spent their gold in drinking and
debauchery. Of course many of the leaders put away tidy sums for a
rainy day, for, as we have seen, more than one of them retired from the
wild life and settled down in the islands or in their native land well
provided with the wherewithal to live as gentlemen to the end of their
days. But it is far more likely that these canny pirate chiefs placed
their loot in the keeping of some trusted merchant ashore than that
they buried it on wave-washed bits of land, and all our searching among
the ruins of Cayo Levantado resulted in the finding of but three
corroded pieces of the quaint cross money of the old Spanish padres.
Joseph, who made the discovery, was as pleased as though he had
unearthed a chest of pieces of eight, and Trouble and the others of the
crew, including even Sam, delved and dug like navvies in the hopes of
finding more. No doubt, by going carefully over all the ruins and
sifting the earth and mold, one might find many relics of the
buccaneers, but aside from a few gun flints, some broken clay pipes
curiously ornamented with high-pooped ships upon their bowls, some bits
of old crockery and a lead button, the labors of my men resulted in
little.
This is scarcely to be wondered at. Unless made of precious metal,
bronze, lead, or brass, any small weapons, ornaments, or appurtenances
of the pirates would long since have disappeared, for steel and iron
corrode and go to pieces in a few years near salt water in a tropical
climate, and even the three big cannon that I found below the
embrasures of the pirates’ fort were little more than flakes and scales
of rust, and were so thoroughly rotten that they could be kicked to
pieces.
Moreover, for many years after the buccaneers were at last driven from
the island, the place was occupied by the Spanish, then by the French,
then by the Haitians, and even by the British (for Samana Bay has
belonged to all of these in turn), and no doubt the soldiers, and
civilians as well, passed many an hour searching for any treasures or
keepsakes they might find. Certain it is that they carried off the old
guns, at any rate those of bronze, which the pirates left behind, as
well as the stores of shot, for such is a matter of historical record.
Some of the very cannon that roared defiance from the buccaneers’
fort—bell-muzzled, highly decorated affairs, with handles on their
barrels and elaborate scrollwork over their breeches, are still
scattered over Santo Domingo, clumsily mounted on the toy forts or used
as posts at street corners in the cities.
And what of the pirates who built this impregnable fastness and
fortified this isle in Samana Bay? Were they British, French, or Dutch?
And who were the leaders who made their headquarters here? Mainly they
were French, members of that great buccaneer colony at Tortuga; for in
the days when Cayo Levantado became a buccaneer lair the majority of
the British pirates had parted company with their former French
associates and had made their headquarters at Port Royal, Jamaica.
Unquestionably Samana Bay knew the ships and the ensigns of nearly all
the most notorious pirate chieftains, both French and British, and the
great Morgan himself, Bartholomew Sharp of Most Blessed Trinity fame,
Sawkins and Wafer, Red Legs and Watling, Ringrose and Esquemelling,
Bartholomew Portugues, Rock Brasiliano, and even that most execrable
and bloodthirsty fiend of all, Francis Lolonais, made Samana Bay their
rendezvous and spent many a day at Trade Wind Cay.
We know from Esquemelling’s chronicles that in 1673 this isle was a
stronghold of the French pirates, for, as we have seen, Monsieur Ogeron
also landed here after escaping from his captivity in Porto Rico and
recruited a large body of pirates to join him in a second attack on
that island. A few years later, too, Le Sieur Maintenon and his
corsairs set sail from Samana Bay for Trinidad, which they sacked,
afterward accepting for it a ransom of ten thousand pieces of eight;
and hence they went forth on their ill-starred attempt to pillage the
city of Caracas.
Unfortunately, the history of the buccaneers is very incomplete, and
such accounts as were left by Esquemelling, Dampier, Ringrose, and
others are mainly concerned with the pirates’ deeds and defeats, rather
than with their home life, and dates are woefully lacking. Moreover,
the writers were so familiar with the comparatively uninteresting life
and doings in the corsairs’ haunts that it never occurred to them that
such matters might interest others, while, in addition, few had any
fixed abode, but were quite equally at home in Tortuga, Jamaica, Samana
Bay, or the Virgin Islands. They were a restless lot, veritable gipsies
of the sea; and while certain islands were associated with certain
pirate leaders, as Jamaica with Morgan, St. Barts with Montbars, and
Tortuga with Ogeron, most of their refuges welcomed any or all of them,
and the common run of those who thronged these places owed allegiance
to no particular leader, but gladly threw in their lot with any one who
proposed an undertaking that promised loot and adventure. Hence we
cannot say definitely what great pirate conceived the idea of
fortifying Trade Wind Cay, but the chances are that several united to
make it what it was, and it certainly was the den of many during the
heyday of the freebooters.
In addition to this fortress of the buccaneers, Samana Bay has much in
the way of beauty and attraction; and having roamed and delved and dug
over the little isle to our hearts’ content we hoisted anchor and
cruised about the shores of this great lake-like arm of the sea.
A few miles beyond Cayo Levantado, and nestling at the foot of the
green hills on the bay’s northern shores, is the town of Samana, or, to
give it its full name, Santa Barbara de Samana; which is charmingly
pretty—from a distance. As a town there is little to it, once one steps
ashore. It is neither over-clean nor attractive, and it can boast of
nothing in the way of old or impressive buildings. It is, however,
unique, inasmuch as the negroes who dwell therein and in the vicinity
nearly all speak English, being, to use their own quaint phrase, “of
American abstraction,” descendants of blacks from the Southern States
brought out as laborers when Samana was leased to an American company
many years ago. While far more ambitious and industrious than the other
natives, they do not by any means make the most of the rich and fertile
land whereon they dwell. Never in any part of the tropics have I seen
or tasted such enormous and delicious pineapples as are grown here; and
wonderful navel oranges, that equal and even excel the much-praised
California fruit, go begging at a few cents a hundred.
Farther up the bay—at the very head of it, in fact—and bounded at its
western end by a vast mangrove swamp, is the ramshackle, dirty little
town of Sanchez, a miserable hole, which, withal, is of vast
importance, as it is the tide-water terminus of the railway to the
great interior table-land or Vega Real and the cities of La Vega and
Santiago.
On the southern side of the bay is wild, uninhabited, heavily forested
land, rising in hills and ridges to the mighty bulwarks of the
mountains, with their summits nearly two miles above the sea, and
sloping eastward to the grassy savannas of the Seybo district. Here at
the borders of the low land is Caña Honda Bay (a lovely landlocked body
of water surrounded by vast mangrove swamps that are the haunt of
countless water-fowl and manatees), whence a road, so called, leads
inland toward the savannas and the southern coast of Santo Domingo. All
about the entrance to Caña Honda Bay are odd conical limestone hills,
resembling strikingly the conventional mountains on ancient maps, and
in each and every one there is a cavern. Some of these caves are
enormous, penetrating the hills for miles and wondrously hung with
stalactites and paved with stalagmites; others are small. Some have
entrances high and dry on land, others can be entered only by means of
boats, and the mouths of many of them are completely submerged.
In ages past, these caverns were the dwelling-places, or at least the
stopping-places, of Indians, and in many of them are vast quantities of
sea-shells, among which one finds stone implements and prehistoric
pottery. Here, too, the natives declare, is buried treasure, and while
even the imaginative Dominicans do not contend that any has ever been
found, yet, if the buccaneers ever did hide loot in Santo Domingo, here
among these myriad caves was the ideal spot.
Beyond these hills and opposite Trade Wind Cay is a long, sandy point
covered with a vast growth of coconut-palms, self-planted from the
cargo of a wrecked vessel which went to pieces in the bay years ago;
and along the beach quantities of amber may be found. To be sure, no
perfect specimens and no large masses have been secured, but the
natives gather it, when they are not too lazy to take the trouble, and
sell it to the padres, who use it for incense in the churches.
But we upon the Vigilant could spare no time to search for the bits of
fossil gum, and so, having made the circuit of the bay, we stood once
more to sea and swinging northward heeled to a thrashing wind upon our
beam and sped on toward Puerto Plata.