a brigantine, mounted twenty
guns on her, and with one hundred and fifty men, sailed for
Guadaloupe, among the West Indies. He took several valuable prizes,
but, during his absence upon a cruise, the island was captured by the
British, so he started for a more congenial clime. He roved about for
some months, to settle at last at Barrataria, near New Orleans,
Louisiana. He was rich; he had amassed great quantities of booty; and
he was a man of property. Lafitte, in fact, was a potentate.

"Now," said the privateer and pirate, "I will settle down and found a
colony."

But can a man of action keep still?

It is true that Lafitte was not as bold and audacious as before, for
he was now obliged to have dealings with merchants of the United
States and the West Indies who frequently owed him large sums of
money, and the cautious transactions necessary to found and to conduct
a colony of pirates and smugglers in the very teeth of civilization,
made the black-haired Frenchman cloak his real character under a
veneer of supposed gentility. Hundreds of privateers, pirates, and
smugglers gathered around the banner of this robber of the high seas.

But what is Barrataria?

Part of the coast of Louisiana is called by that name: that part lying
between Bastien Bay on the east, and the mouth of the wide river, or
bayou of La Fourche, on the west. Not far from the rolling, sun-baked
Atlantic are the lakes of Barrataria, connecting with one another by
several large bayous and a great number of branches. In one of these
is the Island of Barrataria, while this sweet-sounding name is also
given to a large basin which extends the entire length of the cypress
swamps, from the Gulf of Mexico, to a point three miles above New
Orleans. The waters from this lake slowly empty into the Gulf by two
passages through the Bayou Barrataria, between which lies an island
called Grand Terre: six miles in length, and three in breadth, running
parallel with the coast. To the West of this is the great pass of
Barrataria, where is about nine to ten feet of water: enough to float
the ordinary pirate or privateersman's vessel. Within this pass--about
two miles from the open sea--lies the only safe harbor upon the coast,
and this is where the cut-throats, pirates, and smugglers gathered
under Lafitte. They called themselves _Barratarians_, and they were a
godless crew.

At a place called Grand Terre, the privateers would often make public
sale of their carg