, Add. MSS., 36,319, No. 7; 36,320, No. 8;
36,321, No. 24; 36,322, No. 23.]

[Footnote 77: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660:--1629, 5th and 30th Nov.; 1630,
29th July.]

[Footnote 78: Gage saw at Cartagena about a dozen English prisoners
captured by the Spaniards at sea, and belonging to the settlement on
Providence Island.]

[Footnote 79: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660:--1635, 19th March; 1636, 26th
March.]

[Footnote 80: Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,323, No. 10.]

[Footnote 81: Duro, Tomo., iv. p. 339; _cf._ also in Bodleian
Library:--"A letter written upon occasion in the Low Countries, etc.
Whereunto is added avisos from several places, of the taking of the
Island of Providence, by the Spaniards from the English. London. Printed
for Nath. Butter, Mar. 22, 1641.

"I have letter by an aviso from Cartagena, dated the 14th of September,
wherein they advise that the galleons were ready laden with the silver,
and would depart thence the 6th of October. The general of the galleons,
named Francisco Dias Pimienta, had beene formerly in the moneth of July
with above 3000 men, and the least of his ships, in the island of S.
Catalina, where he had taken and carried away with all the English, and
razed the forts, wherein they found 600 negroes, much gold and indigo,
so that the prize is esteemed worth above halfe a million."]

[Footnote 82: Rawl. MSS., A. 32,297; 31, 121.]

CHAPTER II

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE BUCCANEERS

In the second half of the sixteenth and the early part of the
seventeenth centuries, strangers who visited the great Spanish islands
of Hispaniola, Jamaica or Porto Rico, usually remarked the extraordinary
number of wild cattle and boars found roaming upon them. These herds
were in every case sprung from domestic animals originally brought from
Spain. For as the aborigines in the Greater Antilles decreased in
numbers under the heavy yoke of their conquerors, and as the Spaniards
themselves turned their backs upon the Antilles for the richer
allurements of the continent, less and less land was left under
cultivation; and cattle, hogs, horses and even dogs ran wild, increased
at a rapid rate, and soon filled the broad savannas and deep woods which
covered the greater part of these islands. The northern shore of
Hispaniola the Spaniards had never settled, and thither, probably from
an early period, interloping ships were accustomed to resort when in
want of victuals. With a long range of uninhabited coast, good a