CHAPTER XII

THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE BUCCANEERS

Sailing along the shores of Santo Domingo, one realizes the aptness of the graphic illustration of the island’s appearance with which, tradition says, Columbus answered Queen Isabella’s queries. The great discoverer, according to the story, seized a sheet of parchment, crumpled it in his hands, and, dropping it on the table before his queen, exclaimed, “That is like Hispaniola!”

And nothing could be more like a crumpled piece of parchment than the tumbled, serrated mass of ridges, hills, mountains, and peaks of this great island. Wild, forest-covered, sublime in their grandeur, the mountains of Santo Domingo rise in endless succession, and one marvels that the old Dons, a mere handful of men, could ever have penetrated its fastnesses and subdued and exterminated the Indians. But the Spaniards with all their faults were made of stern stuff,—real “he men,”—and fired with the zeal of conquest, the fanatical determination to spread their faith among the heathen, and an insatiable lust for gold, they accomplished marvels and performed deeds which seem well-nigh impossible. Let anyone to-day, equipped with every device and convenience and in the lightest clothing, step ashore on the coast of Santo Domingo and penetrate to the interior through the unbroken jungle, and he will feel, when he reaches his journey’s end,—if, indeed, he ever does,—that he has performed a mighty feat. Climbing precipitous mountain sides, swimming rivers, fording streams, crawling up dry watercourses, hewing his way an inch at a time through the tangled vegetation; beset by biting insects, drenched with rain, torn by thorns and razor-grass, and exhausted with the steaming heat, he finds such a trip enough to try the stoutest nerves and the strongest muscles. But imagine undertaking such an expedition when clad in armor! Think of attempting the journey weighted down with mail, carrying a clumsy match-lock or a massive cross-bow, a heavy sword, a pike or halberd, and harassed by hostile Indians at every step. But the old Dons did it, did it and won out, though literally living off the country, knowing not what might meet them at their journey’s end, and completely cut off from civilization and their fellows.

Of course they achieved their object at the cost of a tremendous loss of life. If one hundred men set forth and a dozen won safely through, it was doing well, and rarely did more than ten per cent. of their number return in safety from their expeditions into the untrod jungles of the New World. But to them the lives of men-at-arms, of the common soldier or adventurer, were nothing; and the more that fell by the way, the more loot there would be to divide among the survivors. We must bear this in mind when thinking of the early days of the West Indies and the Spanish Main, for it was this utter disregard of life that enabled both Dons and buccaneers to perform deeds which, were they not incontrovertible historical facts, we should consider absolutely impossible.

Here, on the northern shores of Hispaniola, the Spaniards landed and marched inland to the vast interior Vega Real or Royal Plain and the Cibao district with its golden sands; and there on the high interior plains they founded and built the cities of La Vega, Moca, and Santiago de los Caballeros, cities which still stand. In these cities are many lineal descendants of the conquistadors, and in their dwellings one may still find weapons and pieces of armor which have been handed down through the centuries. Indeed, in the ruins of La Vega la Antigua, which was destroyed by an earthquake in 1564, one may yet dig up ancient Spanish coins, old Toledo blades, and other relics; and throughout the island one sees the natives armed with home-made machetes fashioned from old swords they have salvaged from the ruins of this once rich and famous town.

To-day, however, one travels from the coast to the Cibao by railway, and takes the train at Puerto Plata, a delightfully situated port which the Vigilant passed the second day after leaving the Mona Passage and heading westward along the coast. Puerto Plata is beautiful from the sea, with its red-roofed buildings half hidden by palms at the base of the towering green cone of Plata Mountain; and in reality the town is by far the cleanest and most attractive in the republic. Its harbor is excellent, being almost landlocked, but the water shoals so gradually that despite a long pier jutting from the waterfront of the town into the bay the drays and trucks are compelled to drive out until the mules and horses are belly-deep in the water, in order to load or unload the boats.

It was off Puerto Plata that a vast treasure in bullion was recovered many years ago—one of the few authentic cases of the actual finding of ancient treasure in the West Indies. This happened in the latter part of the eighteenth century when Captain William Phipps of Salem,—a worthy mariner with a love of romance and one-time governor of Massachusetts,—became imbued with the idea of recovering treasure-trove from a galleon which, in endeavoring to escape from the buccaneers, had been sunk off Puerto Plata. In those days, even as to-day, sunken treasure appealed to many otherwise hard-headed and practical men, and Captain Phipps found backers who provided the ships and wherewithal for his expedition. Apparently his information as to the location of the old wreck was somewhat hazy, and after a deal of search he had about given up in despair when one of his divers brought up a lump of coral growing upon an oddly squarish and heavy object. Knocking off the incrustation, the captain found an ingot of silver, and ere tempestuous weather came on several tons of bullion, together with gold and jewels,—in all amounting to over one and a half million dollars,—had been dragged from the depths of the sea and safely stowed under hatches.

Had the worthy Phipps been content with a comfortable fortune, he could have spent his declining years in a snug little home in Salem, where, surrounded by his grandchildren, he might have spun many a yarn of his treasure-hunt. But he was too avaricious, and, anxious to secure the last bit of treasure that might still lie among the corals of Silver Shoals, he spent his share of the salvaged bullion in outfitting another expedition. Unfortunately a storm came up, his ship was wrecked, and Phipps barely escaped with his life and came home as poor as when he had first started treasure-seeking.

A few miles beyond Puerto Plata, completely hidden in the interminable green jungle and with nothing to distinguish it from any other of the thousands of little coves that indent the coast, is the site of the first European settlement in the New World. Isabella, Columbus named it in honor of the queen who made his discoveries possible, and here in December, 1493, he built, on his second voyage to the New World, a tiny fort, erected a few houses, and left a handful of men. Near here the Dons found the first gold they had seen in a natural state in the lands they had discovered, the flakes of precious metal adhering with sand to the water-casks which the sailors filled at a near-by stream. This, with the Indians’ information that they obtained all their gold from inland, convinced Columbus that untold wealth was to be had for the asking, so to speak; and, planting his little town of Isabella, he sailed away, expecting to return the following year to find the settlers surrounded with chests and bags full of the yellow metal. Instead, when he returned, he found most of them dead and buried, the settlement destroyed, and no gold. Maltreatment of the natives had brought swift vengeance upon the Spaniards; fever and the climate had aided the red men, and Isabella had passed out of existence. It was never rebuilt, and all that remains of this first town in America are a few crumbling, jungle-grown walls.

Beyond Isabella the green and luxuriant verdure gives way to barren hills and cactus-covered plains, until the frowning, red-cliffed headland of El Morro is passed, with the miserable, mosquito-infested mud-hole of a town known as Monte Cristo. Just beyond this God-forsaken spot we left the waters of the Dominican Republic behind, and, entering the territorial waters of Haiti, rushed westward toward the great bulk of Tortuga, the birthplace of the buccaneers.

Larger than any of the Lesser Antilles, Tortuga stretches its mass of wooded hills and mountains for nearly twenty-five miles, with a width of three miles. It is an impenetrable jungle for the most part, almost uninhabited, but it was once the greatest of all the resorts of the buccaneers and the home of the most notorious pirates of history.

Separated from the mainland of Santo Domingo 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, 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 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.

There was no occasion for bloodshed, however, for the handful of settlers upon Tortuga were peaceable and friendly folk, and instead of resisting the Kittefonians they welcomed them, and aided them in every way. Thus for six months the French and Spanish dwelt together on the best of terms in Tortuga. But this state of affairs did not endure for long. The French, finding Tortuga an agreeable spot, well stocked with game as well as wild hogs and cattle, crossed and recrossed the sea to French settlements and brought scores of their countrymen to the new land, until the Dons, feeling that the place would soon become wholly French, repented of their former friendliness and sent word of the newcomers’ presence to the Spanish at Santo Domingo.

As a result, a strong force of Spanish troops was despatched to Tortuga, and the French, realizing the futility of resistance, promptly took to the woods and later secretly made their way in their canoes to the neighboring island of Hispaniola. Here they lived in the jungle and carried on a guerrilla warfare against the Dons, who were ever seeking to eliminate their unwelcome guests. Finding no French at Tortuga, the Spanish soon withdrew the bulk of the troops, to use them to better advantage on the larger island, whereupon the tactful French hied themselves once more to Tortuga, massacred the few Spaniards left there, and, taking possession, threw up hastily constructed fortifications. Then, aware that they could not hope to resist the mighty power of Spain for long, they despatched a boat to St. Kitts, begging the French governor of that island to send aid.

Being only too glad to add to the possessions of France, the governor immediately responded by sending over a good-sized ship with a large complement of men, a plentiful store of arms, cannon and ammunition, and a quantity of supplies. The new arrivals at once began constructing a fort upon the summit of a rocky hill which overlooked the harbor, and which was so situated that it could be reached only by means of a defile barely wide enough to permit the passage of two persons abreast. Here a battery of two guns was erected, a house was built, and a natural cavern was transformed into a magazine, and, as a finishing touch, the natural passway was destroyed and the fort rendered accessible only by means of ladders.

Feeling that they were now quite secure, the French colonists set diligently to work, cultivating tobacco and other crops, fishing, hunting the wild cattle and swine, and, most lucrative of all, robbing the Spanish settlements on the coasts of the near-by Spanish islands.

At that time one of the principal articles of food and of export was the smoke-dried flesh of cattle and hogs, a product peculiar to Hispaniola and the neighboring islands and known by the Carib name of boucan or bucan. Tortuga, with limited agricultural resources but innumerable wild animals, was particularly well adapted to the bucanning industry, and a very large proportion of the settlers devoted virtually all their time to hunting and curing meat. As a result, the inhabitants soon became known as boucaniers, bucaneers or buccaneers, a name which was to become famed throughout the world. The original significance of “buccaneer” was wholly lost and, becoming synonymous with “pirate,” it was destined to carry terror to the hearts of the Spaniards far and near. To Tortuga, the home of the buccaneers, flocked malcontents, adventurers, real pirates, seamen, and all sorts of wild rovers of the sea and land, until the island became headquarters for the most lawless of French and British wanderers and outlaws. But all were bound together by a common hatred of the Spaniards; all were willing to enter into any wild enterprise that promised loot; all were absolutely fearless, unprincipled, ruthless, and daring; and all took unto themselves the common name of buccaneers.

Do not imagine, however, that the Dons upon the neighboring island stood idly by and saw Tortuga fall into the buccaneers’ hands without making any effort to prevent it. On the contrary, they did their best to recover the island, though without success. Upon a hill overlooking the French fort they established a battery of their own, and were about to make matters very uncomfortable for the buccaneers when the latter surprised them at midnight and took their fort by storm, slaughtering the defenders without mercy and throwing the survivors over the beetling cliffs. After this the buccaneers had it pretty much their own way for about thirty years, or until 1664, when the French West India Company was granted a royal charter to Tortuga, by the French crown.

But the West India Company soon found that to be granted a charter to the headquarters of the buccaneers was one thing and to secure their rights and privileges and bend the lawless rascals to their will was quite a different matter. Sending out their own factors and employees, the company established stores and plantations, but this effort was a failure; for no nation dared trade with Tortuga, so close to Spanish territory, and even the company’s own ships were often seized and lost. Then the company sought to carry on trade with the buccaneers themselves, agreeing to supply them with goods and necessities on credit, the buccaneers to pay as they could from the fruits of their forays. But the company’s factors soon discovered that the buccaneers were as inclined to questionable methods when dealing with their own country as when dealing with the Dons; and they received merely rude jests and laughter, or even blows at times, in place of money, when they sought to collect their accounts. Even when armed men were sent out to enforce a settlement, the buccaneers flatly refused to pay; and those of the guards who did not desert and throw in their lot with the freebooters cast aside their weapons and left the company at the first opportunity.

At last, convinced that these were far from desirable customers or neighbors, the French West India Company made the best of a bad bargain and, disposing of their few remaining possessions for what they would bring, withdrew from Tortuga and left it in undisputed control of the buccaneers.

This, then, was the beginning of that vast, all but unconquerable, incredibly valiant, and unspeakably cruel and unprincipled organization known as the “Brethren of the Main.” Here in Tortuga the buccaneers came into existence; from a handful of despoiled Frenchmen from St. Kitts the band grew to thousands; from robbing Spanish corrals and chicken roosts along the shores of Hispaniola they progressed to the destruction of Spanish fleets, the sacking of towns, the capture of fortresses, and to unparalleled feats of bravery. From Tortuga they spread far and near, and the dugouts in which they were wont to make their first raids gave place to swift ships bristling with cannon and manned by hundreds of well-armed men; while from the harmless and peaceful occupation of drying meat, which gave them their name, they turned to bloodshed and piracy.