sseurs, and finally was welcomed to Havana by Don Luis de las Casas,
who overlooked, for this occasion only, an injunction of his court
against admitting foreigners within his government,--"the only
accustomed exception being," as Don Luis courteously assured him, "in
favor of foreign traders who came with new negroes." To be sure, the
commissioner had not brought any of these commodities, but then he had
come to obtain the means of capturing some, and so might pass for an
irregular practitioner of the privileged profession.

Accordingly, Don Guillermo Dawes Quarrell (so ran his passport) found no
difficulty in obtaining permission from the governor to buy as many dogs
as he desired. When, however, he carelessly hinted at the necessity of
taking, also, a few men who should have care of the dogs,--this being,
after all, the essential part of his expedition,--Don Luis de las Casas
put on instantly a double force of courtesy, and assured him of the
entire impossibility of recruiting a single Spaniard for English
service. Finally, however, he gave permission and passports for six
chasseurs. Under cover of this, the commissioner lost no time in
enlisting forty; he got them safe to Batabano, but at the last moment,
learning the state of affairs, they refused to embark on such very
irregular authority. When he had persuaded them, at length, the officer
of the fort interposed objections. This was not to be borne, so Don
Guillermo bribed him and silenced him; a dragoon was, however, sent to
report to the governor; Don Guillermo sent a messenger after him and
bribed him, too; and thus, at length, after myriad rebuffs, and after
being obliged to spend the last evening at a puppet-show, in which the
principal figure was a burlesque on his own personal peculiarities, the
weary Don Guillermo, with his crew of renegadoes, and his forty
chasseurs and their one hundred and four muzzled dogs, set sail for
Jamaica.

These new allies were certainly something formidable, if we may trust
the pictures and descriptions in Dallas's History. The chasseur was a
tall, meagre, swarthy Spaniard or mulatto, lightly clad in cotton shirt
and drawers, with broad straw-hat and moccasins of raw hide; his belt
sustaining his long, straight, flat sword or _machete_, like an iron bar
sharpened at one end; and he wore by the same belt three cotton leashes
for his three dogs, sometimes held also by chains. The dogs were a
fierce breed, crossed between hound a