320 TKAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



ployed in sounding the entrances of the Mississippi, 

 preparatory to the expedition against New Orleans. 

 Whilst away from his ship on a turtling party, he 

 and two of his comrades had been captured by 

 Lafitte, the famous French pirate, whose chief haunt 

 was on the island of Barataria, in the Gulf of Mexico, 

 whence, from amidst shoals and swamps impenetrable 

 to those unacquainted with their intricacies, he issued 

 forth to commit depredations on the high seas, and 

 especially in the Mexican Gulf. During an inland ex- 

 cursion, about two years previously to the date of this 

 chapter, Lafitte discovered the Indian village on the 

 Natchez, and was at first about to attack and plunder 

 it ; but the determined attitude of its defenders, and 

 still more, the reflection that their alliance might be 

 useful to him against the Louisianian authorities, 

 who had set a price upon his head, induced him to 

 change his intention, and to hold out the right hand 

 of good-fellowship to the red men. Tokeah, whose 

 ruling passion was hatred of the Americans, gladly 

 concluded an alliance with the pirate, who professed 

 an equal detestation of them. The Frenchman 

 speedily ingratiated himself with the old chief, with 

 whom he bartered a portion of his plunder for pro- 

 visions of various kinds; and after a time, Tokeah, 

 unsuspicious of the real character of his disreputable 

 ally, whom he believed the chief of an independent 

 tribe living on the sea-shore, promised him Rosa in 

 marriage an arrangement to which, as has already 



