e
strange scenes. We may picture a squalid little "cow town," with
tropical vegetation growing up to the doors. A few rough bungalow
houses, a few huts thatched with palm leaves, a few casks standing in
the shade of pent roofs. To seaward a few ships of small tonnage lying
at anchor. To landward hilly ground, broken into strips of tillage,
where some wretches hoe tobacco under the lash. In the street, in the
sunlight, lie a few savage dogs. At one of the houses, a buccaneer has
just finished flogging his valet; he is now pouring lemon juice, mixed
with salt and pepper, into the raw, red flesh. At another house, a gang
of dirty men in dirty scarlet drawers are drinking turn about out of a
pan of brandy. The reader may complete the sketch should he find it
sufficiently attractive.

[Footnote 7: Exquemeling.]

When the buccaneers elected their first captain, they had made but few
determined forays against the Spaniards. The greater number of them were
French cattle hunters dealing in boucanned meat, hides, and tallow. A
few hunted wild boars; a few more planted tobacco of great excellence,
with a little sugar, a little indigo, and a little manioc. Among the
company were a number of wild Englishmen, of the stamp of Oxenham, who
made Tortuga their base and pleasure-house, using it as a port from
which to sally out to plunder Spanish ships. After a cruise, these
pirates sometimes went ashore for a month or two of cattle hunting.
Often enough, the French cattle hunters took their places on the ships.
The sailors and huntsmen soon became amphibious, varying the life of the
woods with that of a sailor, and sometimes relaxing after a cruise with
a year's work in the tobacco fields. In 1638, when the Spanish made
their raid, there were considerable numbers (certainly several hundreds)
of men engaged in these three occupations. After the raid they
increased in number rapidly; for after the raid they began to revenge
themselves by systematic raids upon the Spaniards--a business which
attracted hundreds of young men from France and England. After the raid,
too, the French and English Governments began to treat the planters of
the St Kitts colony unjustly, so that many poor men were forced to leave
their plots of ground there. These men left the colonies to join the
buccaneers at Tortuga, who soon became so numerous that they might have
made an independent state had they but agreed among themselves. This
they could not do, for the F