THE BUCCANEERS. 



375 



seaports of the world, in order to refer to a practice which was 

 now rendering commerce hazardous and the whole highway of 

 the seas insecure, — piracy. Besides the numerous isolated ad- 

 venturers who preyed upon the vessels of any and every nation 

 which fell in their way, a powerful association or league of 

 robbers, who infested particularly the West India Islands and 

 the Caribbean Sea, and who bore the name of Buccaneers, be- 

 came, during the century of which we are now speaking, the 

 peculiar dread of Spanish ships. We shall describe this fra- 

 ternity in some detail. The term buccaneer is a corruption of 

 the French word boucanier, which in its turn was made from the 

 Caribbean noun boucan, being the flesh of cattle dried and pre- 

 served in a peculiar manner. The French also called them 

 flibustiers, this word being a corruption of the English word 

 freebooters; and this French word has been still further tortured 

 into "Filibusters," — a term now applied to such Americans as 

 desire violently to extend the area of freedom. 



The buccaneers were principally natives of Great Britain and 

 France, and first attract notice in the island of St. Domingo. 

 The Spaniards would not allow any other nation than their own 

 to trade in the West Indies, and pursued and murdered the 

 English and French wherever they found them. Every foreigner 

 discovered among the islands or on the coast of the American 

 continent was treated as a smuggler and a robber ; and it was 

 not long before they became so, and organized themselves into 

 an association capable of returning cruelty by cruelty. The 

 Spaniards employed coast-guards to keep off interlopers, the 

 commanders of which were instructed to massacre all their 

 prisoners. This tended to produce a close alliance, offensive 

 and defensive, among the mariners of all other nations, who in 

 their turn made descents upon the coasts and ravaged the 

 weaker Spanish towns and settlements. A permanent state 

 of hostilities was thus established in the West Indies, indepen- 

 dent of peace or war at home. After the failure of the mines 



