In the wake of the buccaneers

by A. Hyatt Verrill

CARIB CANOES

It was in such craft that the first buccaneers voyaged from St. Kitts to Hispaniola

TORTUGA

The birthplace of the buccaneers

Separated from the mainland of Santo Domingo [[217]]by only a narrow strait, Tortuga was an ideal spot for the sea-rovers, and for many a year they held it, having their own governors, their own laws, their own forts, and brazenly defying the world to dislodge them. Here their ships rode to anchor under the protecting guns of their fort; from here they fitted out fleets of heavily armed vessels manned by thousands of the most reckless, daring, ruthless men who ever lived; and from this stronghold—right in the Dons’ dooryard, as we might say—the buccaneers ravaged Spanish cities and destroyed Spanish ships throughout the length and breadth of the Caribbean and beyond.

In the well-protected harbor where once the fleets of Lolonais, Morgan, Montbars, and many another corsair had swung to their moorings, the little Vigilant dropped her anchor. Although to-day the port is scarcely worthy the name of town, yet in the heyday of the buccaneers Cayona, as it was called, had a teeming population. It was divided into four sections, known as the Lowland or Basseterre, comprising the coastal land and the port proper; the Middle Plantation, which was a district mainly devoted to tobacco-culture; the Ringot, and Le Mont or The Mountain, which consisted of the oldest settlement on the slopes of the towering hills behind the port. Beyond these the island was uninhabited, [[218]]as it is to-day. It is extremely mountainous and rocky, although heavily wooded, a fact which aroused the interest of Esquemelling and caused him to comment upon it. He says:

Yet notwithstanding hugely thick of lofty trees that cease not to grow upon the hardest of these rocks without partaking of softer soil. Hence it comes that their roots for the greatest part, are seen all over, entangled among the rocks, not unlike the branching of ivy against our walls.

This is an excellent description, and one which will give a vivid idea of the difficulties to be encountered in penetrating the interior of the island. Moreover, the northern coast is forbidding, with precipitous cliffs along the shore and with no harbors or landing-places, so that the island was virtually inaccessible except on the southwestern end where the port was established. This natural formation of the island, which rendered it very easy to fortify, was no doubt one of the chief reasons why it was selected by the buccaneers as their headquarters. But there were other reasons, of perhaps even greater importance, to understand which we must look into the origin and history of the sea-rovers.

Tortuga had its beginning in a handful of refugees from St. Kitts, Frenchmen who had settled on that isle and had been driven off by the Spaniards [[219]]in 1629. Fleeing from the Dons, they made their way in little dugout canoes to Hispaniola. To their wave-weary eyes this vast, heavily wooded, luxuriant land must have seemed a veritable paradise, and when, upon landing and penetrating a short distance into the interior, they found it teeming with wild cattle, wild hogs, and wild horses, they realized that fortune had indeed favored them. But the herds of wild cattle, horses, and swine were not the only denizens of Hispaniola, for the Spaniards had long been established there, and the refugees from St. Kitts knew that as soon as they were discovered by the Dons they would meet with a summary end. Near at hand, however, was the promising island of Tortuga, with barely a dozen Spaniards dwelling upon it, and, again taking to the miniature craft which had served them so well, the Frenchmen sailed across the strait, determined to do or die.