150 WANDEEINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



After experiencing every kindness and attention from 

 Mr. Edmonstone, he sailed for Granada, and from thence 

 to St. Thomas's, a few days before poor Captain Peake lost 

 his life on his own quarter-deck, bravely fighting for his 

 country on the coast of Guiana. 



At St. Thomas's they show you a tower, a little distance 

 from the town, which they say formerly belonged to a 

 Bucanier chieftain. Probably the fury of besiegers has 

 reduced it to its present dismantled state. What still 

 remains of it bears testimony of its former strength, and 

 may brave the attack of time for centuries. You cannot 

 view its ruins without calling to mind the exploits of those 

 fierce and hardy hunters, long the terror of the western 

 woi'ld. While you admire their undaunted courage, you 

 lament that it was often stained with cruelty ; while you 

 extol their scrupulous justice to each other, you will find 

 a want of it towards the rest of mankind. Often pos- 

 sessed of enormous wealth, often in extreme poverty, 

 often triumphant on the ocean, and often forced to fly to 

 the forests, tlieir life was an ever-changing scene of ad- 

 vance and retreat, of glory and disorder, of luxury and 

 famine. Spain treated them as outlaws and pirates, while 

 other European powers publicly disowned them. They, on 

 the other hand, maintained that injustice on the part of 

 Spain first forced them to take up arms in self-defence ; 

 and that, whilst they kept inviolable the laws which they 

 had framed for their own common benefit and protection, 

 they had a right to consider as foes those who treated 

 them as outlaws. Under this impression they drew the 

 sword, and rushed on as though in lawful war, and 

 divided the spoils of victory in the scale of justice. 



After leaving St. Thomas's a severe tertian ague every 

 now and then kept putting the traveller in mind that his 

 shattered frame, " starting and shivermg in the inconstant 



