BAHAMA PIE AXES. 315 



appendage of the British crown, upon the ground of his discovery, 

 although mora than a liundred years before Oohimbus had made 

 the acquaintance of some of them, sailed through the group, and 

 claimed all for Ferdinand and Isabella. Soon after this alleged 

 discovery by Capt. Sayle, Charles the Second of England made 

 a royal grant of all the Bahamas, including the islands which 

 Columbus visited in 1492, to the Diike of Albemarle, Lord Craven, 

 Sir John Caterel, Lord Berkley, Lord Sibley, and Sir Peter Cole- 

 ton — the proprietors of Carolina; who did very little for the 

 islands which was of any service to England or to themselves. 



Afterwards, the outlaws of civilization and savages of the sea, 

 frequented the islands, and made them the center of their hostile 

 operations against the commerce of the world. With vessels of 

 light draft, they mastered the intricacies of the tortuous clian- 

 nels, and made themselves familiar with the points of special 

 danger, the safest lines of approach and retreat, the harbors of 

 refuge, the best places for concealment, and the strongholds of 

 defense. Xo light-houses, buoys or reliable charts warned the 

 mariner, or guided him in his course over the perilous waters. 

 Countless rocks and reefs, extensive shoals and banks, intricate 

 currents and cross-currents, severe storms, and an occasional 

 hurricane, would seem to have been sufficient without the still 

 more fearful peril of armed and demoniac brigands of the sea. 



The pirates who succeeded the original inhabitants must have 

 been lineally descended from the early inhabitants of England, 

 if the following description of the latter by Greene is to be credi- 

 ted: " From the first, the daring of the English race broke out 

 in the secrecy and suddenness of the pirate's swoo}), in the fierce- 

 ness of their onset, in the careless glee with which they seized 

 either sword or oar. 'Foes are they,' sang a Koman poet of the 

 time, 'fierce beyond other foes, and cunning as they are fierce; 

 the sea is their school of waj", and the storm their friend; they 

 are sea-wolves that prey on the pillage of tiie world.' " 



