. With the passing of time the sea attracted more and more away
from their former pursuits. Even the planters who were beginning to
filter into the new settlements found the attractions of coursing
against the Spaniards to be irresistible. Great extremes of fortune,
such as those to which the buccaneers were subject, have always
exercised an attraction over minds of an adventurous stamp. It was the
same allurement which drew the "forty-niners" to California, and in 1897
the gold-seekers to the Canadian Klondyke. If the suffering endured was
often great, the prize to be gained was worth it. Fortune, if fickle one
day, might the next bring incredible bounty, and the buccaneers who
sweltered in a tropical sea, with starvation staring them in the face,
dreamed of rolling in the oriental wealth of a Spanish argosy.
Especially to the cattle-hunter must this temptation have been great,
for his mode of life was the very rudest. He roamed the woods by day
with his dog and apprentices, and at night slept in the open air or in a
rude shed hastily constructed of leaves and skins, which served as a
house, and which he called after the Indian name, "ajoupa" or
"barbacoa." His dress was of the simplest--coarse cloth trousers, and a
shirt which hung loosely over them, both pieces so black and saturated
with the blood and grease of slain animals that they looked as if they
had been tarred ("de toile gaudronnee").[102] A belt of undressed bull's
hide bound the shirt, and supported on one side three or four large
knives, on the other a pouch for powder and shot. A cap with a short
pointed brim extending over the eyes, rude shoes of cowhide or pigskin
made all of one piece bound over the foot, and a short, large-bore
musket, completed the hunter's grotesque outfit. Often he carried wound
about his waist a sack of netting into which he crawled at night to keep
off the pestiferous mosquitoes. With creditable regularity he and his
apprentices arose early in the morning and started on foot for the hunt,
eating no food until they had killed and skinned as many wild cattle or
swine as there were persons in the company. After having skinned the
last animal, the master-hunter broke its softest bones and made a meal
for himself and his followers on the marrow. Then each took up a hide
and returned to the boucan, where they dined on the flesh they had
killed.[103] In this fashion the hunter lived for the space of six
months or a year. Then he made a d