which I linger upon these recollections, for I, who had always regarded Robinson Crusoe as the most truthful and the very sublimest of adventurers, was now the entranced beholder of his abiding place, walking, breathing, thinking, and seeing on the very spot! There was no fancy about it, not the least; it was a palpable reality. Talk of gold; why I tell you, my friends, all the gold of California was not worth the ecstatic bliss of that moment!"

All which is eloquent and fine; we must remember, however, that this was the first of these far southern isles Mr Browne had ever seen; and also how fortunate he was to have obtained so much at so little cost,-only the perils of a night and no money payment at all; nor was the extent of gold in California then known; neither the extent of it, nor the amount of ecstatic bliss it would buy.

Returning to prose and reality, we find, by Mr Browne's true and faithful narrative, on the island at this time, the remains of fortifications and convict prison built by the Chilians in 1767, the walls of which had been thrown down by an earthquake in 1835. Previous to this calamity the convicts had broken prison, killed their keepers and fled. A penal colony was established here by the Chilian government in 1819. Inhabiting the island at this time were one American and five Chilian families, living in huts made of the straw of wild oats, and embedded in foliage, while to each was attached a small piece of land fenced with stone and brushwood. Here fruits, vines, and vegetables were grown, while native grass and grain were abundant everywhere. Whalers still touched at these islands, and California vessels, their purchase of supplies giving good profits to the occupants of the land. The good people will also show you, for a consideration, the veritable cave of the renowned Robinson, in a bluff of volcanic rock, with cupboards cut into the sides, and spikes for gunrests; likewise a stone oven, some broken pottery, and fragments of rusty iron, all relics of Robinson. Here cliffs and springs, there goat-paths and goats, buzzards and song birds, all Robinson's, all save a stalactite grotto opening to the ocean, which was called the cave of the buccaneers.

"I could never think of Juan Fernandez" said Browne, as he concluded his narrative, "without a strong desire to be

shipwrecked there, and spend the remainder of my days dressed in goatskins, rambling about the cliffs and hunting wild goats.” Which harmless ambition could not have been so very difficult of attainment; but it appears the versatile Browne preferred after all to go as United States minister to China.

In conclusion I may say that all this about a Crusoe Island in the Pacific, regarded as a myth of some two hundred years standing, is very interesting, but like many other myths, if scrutinized too closely, it vanishes. Says William Lee in his biography of Defoe, "It is evident he acquired some incidents from Selkirk, who lived four years on Juan Fernandez, but the ever-varying events, the useful and improving moralities, and the fascinating style are all his own;" while the author of Robinson Crusoe himself says, " In the gulf or mouth of the mighty river Oroonooko our island lay, which I perceived to the west and northwest was the great Island Trinidad, on the north point of the mouth of that river. I asked Friday a thousand questions about the country, its inhabitants, the sea, the coast, and what nations were there, but could get no other name but Caribs, from whence I easily understood that these were the Caribbees." Thus is clearly shown that the true island of Crusoe is Tobago, information concerning which Defoe easily obtained from pirates and others, and on which were likewise goats, which indeed were common to most of the islands on either side of South America.

CHAPTER XXVIII

LEAVES FROM THE LOG BOOKS OF THE PIRATES

THERE are various kinds of pirates, sea pirates and land pirates, sea robbers or rovers, buccaneers, privateers, filibusters, and freebooters. Those of whom I speak had their happy hunting-ground in the West Indies during parts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with occasional expeditions into the South sea, both by way of the Panamá isthmus and around Cape Horn. There were the Dutch English Portuguese Italians and French, preying on each other, and all preying on the Spaniards, because the possessions of the Spaniards in those days were the broadest and richest of them all, and because the Spaniards were always at war with some one or more of the other nations, which served as an excuse for buccaneering, though all were quite as ready for highway robbery without an excuse.

The cruelties of the Spaniards in forcing beyond their strength and habits the natives of Española and Cuba to labor in the mines and on the plantations led to their extermination, and by the beginning of the sixteenth century these islands were well nigh depopulated, and the cattle, introduced from Europe, increased until immense herds covered the valleys, so that hunting them for the hides and tallow became a profitable occupation. Settlements and plantations of a new and peculiar kind followed, to which English and French sailors, with their contraband goods, were always welcome.

Among the other industries here fostered was that of preserving the flesh of the wild cattle by smoking and drying it; the places where this was done were called boucans, the operation boucanning, and the operatives boucanneers; so that when all these people in a greater or less degree took to searoving, smuggling, and pirating, they were thrown into the one category of buccaneers. Thus there arose a fraternity of freebooters, or filibusters as they were also called, with

Spain as their common enemy, though, as I said before, they had small scruples to take a prize of any nationality, or even to fight each other.

A colony of buccaneers on the island of St Christopher, to which the governments of France and England had both contributed, was in 1629 surprised and scattered by a Spanish fleet of thirty-nine sail, but quickly regained its position upon the departure of the enemy. The buccaneers then established a store-house on the island of Tortuga, more secure from attack than St Christopher, with business headquarters at Santo Domingo. In 1638, while most of the occupants of the island were absent, the Spaniards attacked Tortuga, and killed every man there, but their places were quickly filled by others. At intervals the crown of France claimed possession of the piratical islands, and control of the fraternity, and drove out the English, only to be driven out themselves alternately by the English and Spaniards.

The buccaneers had their common law and code of ethics. Women were seldom a part of the fraternity, household duties being performed by men. Courage and fidelity were the cardinal virtues, and as death was the penalty if captured, quarter was seldom asked or given. Association was voluntary; engagement was only for the cruise, and any member might quit the brotherhood at pleasure. All fighting men might attend councils; commanders were chosen for their ability and bravery, and those who made the leaders could unmake them. Duels were frequently resorted to for the settlement of individual quarrels; an offence against the society was punished by death, abandonment on a deserted island, or it might be simply expulsion.

The rules applied in privateering generally governed in the division of spoils. The captain carpenter sail-maker and surgeon were first considered, the captain receiving five shares and his mate two shares, fighting men one share, boys half a share. Then wounds were examined and paid for, a right arm being valued at 600 pieces of eight, or six slaves; an eye or a finger 100 pieces of eight, or one slave. Food was held in common, and on a cruise consisted largely of pork, with dried beef and salted turtle, cassada maize and potatoes, but no bread. There were two regular meals each day, but any member might help himself to food at pleasure.

Piety was part of the freebooters stock in trade, though not quite in the same degree as was the case with the conquerors. The former desired God's blessing on his enterprise, and prayed for it, saying mass now and then, even carrying a priest sometimes for that purpose, as Francis Drake carried a chaplain; but they did not trouble themselves about saving souls, other than their own, and they never allowed religion to interfere with business, robbing churches being all the same to them as robbing ships.

It is not my purpose to give here a history of the buccaneers, but only to give them brief mention in connection with their doings in the Pacific. The West Indies was their home, where they lived and labored for a good round century, doing other things than acts of pure piracy. The English buccaneers assisted the English in the conquest of Jamaica in 1655. The French buccaneers, under Pierre Legrand, rose at one stroke to fame and fortune by the capture of a richly laden galleon of the annual Spanish fleet, in command of the vice-admiral, the pirates climbing on board from a small boat at night, and surprising the officers at cards in the admiral's cabin.

This achievement made wild with envy the planters of Tortuga and other isles, who with one accord rushed to sea in small boats in search of Spaniards, and soon equipped themselves in better form from their captured prizes. Another Frenchman, Pierre François, captured the vice-admiral of the pearl fleet, while Bartholomew Portugues, with a boat carrying but four guns and thirty men, successfully fought a Spanish war vessel of twenty large guns and seventy

men.

Land-piracy came on apace; Lewis Scot stormed and carried Compeache, securing large ransom; Mansvelt and John Davies followed the bright examples of their predecessors on sea and land. Lolonnois and Montbar, Frenchmen and monsters of cruelty and crime, were long a terror to the Spanish main. Lolonnois began his career with the capture with twenty-two men in two canoes on the coast of Cuba of a Spanish frigate. His prisoners he would throw overboard or burn in their ship; it is said that he once struck off the heads of eighty captives with his own sword by way of amusement. With Michael de Basco and 650 men in eight ships he stormed