he forests were consequently reduced so rapidly that
the buccaneers found it necessary to change their employment--to form
settlements and cultivate the lands. More than two thousand of them
clustered upon Tortuga, where the business of cultivating sugar and
tobacco was begun; but the more general and lucrative employment became
that of piracy. They had as yet no larger craft than the boats and
canoes already mentioned, but with these they managed to navigate the
West India seas, shooting into secure places of refuge among the smaller
islands, or keys, at pleasure.

The community had now become so large, in 1660, that something like
order and government was seen to be necessary even by the buccaneers
themselves; and they accordingly sent to the Governor of St.
Christopher's for a governor. The boon was readily granted, and M. le
Passeur was commissioned to that office. He repaired promptly to Tortuga
with a ship of armed men and stores; assumed the command, and
immediately commenced fortifying the island--a work to which nature had
largely contributed by the peculiar conformation of some of the rock
precipices. There was upon one high rock, inaccessible at all points
save by ladders, a cavern large enough for a garrison of a thousand men,
with an abundant spring gushing from the rocks. This post was seized and
provisioned. Twice the Spaniards invaded them from Hispaniola, but were
repulsed--the last time with terrible slaughter. The invaders were eight
hundred in number. They had seized a yet higher point of rock than the
natural fortress occupied by the buccaneers, upon which they were
endeavoring to plant their cannon, in order the better to dislodge the
enemy. The time chosen for the invasion was when a large number of the
freebooters were at sea. These, however, returning suddenly by night,
climbed the mountain upon the heels of the Spaniards, and attacked them
with such fury as to compel them by hundreds to throw themselves from
the rocky parapets into the valley beneath, by which their bodies were
dashed in pieces. Those who were not killed by the fall were put to the
sword; and few or none returned to rehearse the bloody story.

This ill-starred expedition was the last sent from St. Domingo against
the buccaneers, who thenceforward became the masters and lord
proprietaries of Tortuga. Nor were the buccaneers longer exclusively
composed of adventurous Frenchmen. Visions of golden cities in the New
World had been