HISTORY
OF
THE BUCCANEERS
OF
AMERICA.
CHAPTER I.
Considerations on the Rights acquired by the Discovery of Unknown Lands, and on the Claims advanced by the Spaniards.
The accounts given by the Buccaneers who extended their enterprises to the Pacific Ocean, are the best authenticated of any which have been published by that class of Adventurers. They are interspersed with nautical and geographical descriptions, corroborative of the events related, and more worth being preserved than the memory of what was performed. The materials for this portion of Buccaneer history, which it was necessary should be included in a History of South Sea Navigations, could not be collected without bringing other parts into view; whence it appeared, that with a moderate increase of labour, and without much enlarging the bulk of narrative, a regular history might be formed of their career, from their first rise, to their suppression; and that such a work would not be without its use.