zed the impregnability of the harbor and flocked thither.
Privateers put in and brought their prizes. Tortugas began to prosper.
In 1638 the Spaniards, taking advantage of a time when several large
expeditions of buccaneers were absent, raided the place in force and
shot, hanged, or tortured to death, every man, woman and child they
captured. Only a few of the inhabitants escaped by hiding among the
rocks. But the Spanish did not dare to leave a garrison.

"The buccaneers got together and under Willis, an Englishman, reoccupied
the island. Although Willis was English, the greater part of the
buccaneers with him were French and they gladly accepted a suggestion
from the governor-general at St. Kitts to send a governor to Tortugas.
In 1641 Governor Poincy succeeded in securing possession of the Isle of
Tortugas for the Crown of France. Thus, having a shadow of protection
thrown around it, and being afforded the widest latitude of conduct by
its governor--who fully realized that it was nothing but a nest of
pirates--Tortugas flamed into a mad prosperity.

"That little desert island yonder became the wildest and most abandoned
place that the world probably has ever seen. Sea-rovers, slave-runners,
filibusters, pirates, red-handed ruffians of every variety on land or
sea made it their port of call. Everything could be bought there;
everything sold. There was a market for all booty and every
article--even captured white people for slaves--was exposed for sale. An
adventurer could engage a crew of cut-throats at half-an-hour's notice.
A plot to murder a thousand people in cold blood would be but street
talk. Every crime which could be imagined by a depraved and gore-heated
brain was of daily occurrence. It was a sink of iniquity.

"After France had taken possession of Tortugas, it came about quite
naturally that the French buccaneers found themselves better treated in
that port than the English filibusters or the Dutch Sea-Rovers. Almost
immediately, therefore, the English drew away, and established their
buccaneer base in other islands, notably Jamaica, of which island the
notorious adventurer and pirate, Sir Henry Morgan, became governor.

"The steady rise of Dutch power, bringing about the Dutch War of 1665,
brought about a serious menace against the English power, increased
when, in 1666, France joined hands with Holland. Peace was signed in
1667. In the next thirty years, four local West Indian wars broke out,
the grou