It is to the buccaneers, however, that the history of piracy is indebted for the “glory” which may fill its pages; it is to the men of the stamp of Morgan, Dampier, Peter of Dieppe, and Van Horn, who by their courage, dash, and spasmodic chivalry lent sufficient romance to their misdeeds as to obscure the crime, that we owe the stirring tales of the conquests in the West Indies and South America. And no less a pirate was Francis Drake, who, despite his knighthood and the official countenance the Elizabethan government lent to his attacks upon Spanish galleons and cities, stands forth as one of the greatest free lances of the world. His history is unique, brilliant, and commanding; his service for his country and the attack upon the Spanish Armada atoning, as it were, for his piratical crimes. What irony of fate, that this wonderful man, a knight of England, a member of Parliament, a warrior and sailor, a robber and conqueror, should now lie in a lead coffin at the bottom of the sea off Porto Rico, conquered by death while on his way to the islands so often the object of his pillage! The constant warring of Spain against the powers of the world, not at home but in her western possessions, finally led to that outlawry which under the name of buccaneers terrorized the Caribbean Sea during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1625 the island of St. Christopher was settled by the buccaneers to establish a base; and later the island of Tortuga was captured, which became the scene of constant warfare until the capture of Jamaica in 1655.[1] Pre-eminent amongst the buccaneers of this period who made the Spanish Main a synonym for robbery and bloodshed was Captain Henry Morgan, who, as a pirate, captured Jamaica, was knighted by Charles II., and later made Deputy Governor of the island. He it was who led the buccaneers to the South Sea, opening for them a rich field for booty, by marching across the Isthmus of Panama, fighting a battle and capturing and plundering the city, and, seizing the Spanish vessels in the harbor, set sail for the South Sea, returning by way of Cape Horn with fabulous prizes. After the capture of Cartagena in 1697, the organization of these intrepid, daring, and able freebooters disrupted, and the glory waned and vanished; the degeneracy was rapid and complete, till cut-throats and villainous outlaws took the place of their great predecessors. [Footnote 1: Driven from St. Christopher, the expatriated French and English outlaws settled in San Domingo, an island over whose plains thousands of wild cattle roamed, and found excellent revenue in the capture of these beasts and the sale of the flesh and hides. The peculiar manner of smoking the beef and preserving the hides, known as “bucchanning,” gave them their name.]