Their occupation changed in 1808, in which year the slave-trade was brought to an end by act of Congress. There was also passed an Embargo Act, which forbade trade with foreign countries. Here was a double opportunity for men who placed gain above law. The Lafittes at once took advantage of it, smuggling negroes and British goods, bringing their illicit wares inland by way of the bayous of the coastal plain and readily disposing of them as honest goods. Not long after this time the British cruisers broke up the pirate hordes which had long infested the West Indies. Their haunts were taken and they had to flee. Some of them became smugglers, landing their goods on Amelia Island, on the coast of Florida. Others sought the bays of Louisiana, where they kept up their old trade. The Lafittes now found it to their advantage to handle the goods of these buccaneers, in which they posed as honest merchants. Later on they made piracy their trade, the whole fleet of the rovers coming under their control. Throwing off the cloak of honesty, they openly defied the laws. Prize goods and negroes were introduced into New Orleans with little effort at secrecy, and were sold in disregard of the law and the customs. It was well known that the Baratarian rovers were pirates, but the weak efforts to dislodge them failed and the government was openly despised. Making Barataria Bay their head-quarters and harbor of refuge, the pirates fortified Grande Terre, and built on it their dwellings and store-houses. On Grande Isle farms were cultivated and orange-groves planted. On another island, named the Temple, they held auctions for the sale of their plunder, the purchasers smuggling it up the bayous and introducing it under cover of night into New Orleans, where there was nothing to show its source, though suspicion was rife. Such was Barataria until the war with England began, and such it continued through this war till 1814, the Lafittes and their pirate followers flourishing in their desperate trade. We might go on to tell a gruesome story of fearful deeds by these bandits of the sea; of vessels plundered and scuttled, and sailors made to walk the plank of death; of rich spoil won by ruthless murder, and wild orgies on the shores of Grande Terre. But of all this there is little record, and the lives of these pirates yield us none of the scenes of picturesque wickedness and wholesale murder which embellish the stories of Blackbeard, Morgan, and other sea-rovers of old. Yet the career of the Lafittes has an historical interest which makes it worth the telling.