[Footnote 5: The march on Bethel was begun in high spirits at midnight, but it was near noon when the Zouaves, in their crimson garments, led by Colonel Duryea, charged the batteries, after singing the "Star-Spangled Banner" in chords. Major Winthrop fell in the storming of the enemy's defences, and was left on the battle-field. Lieutenant Greble, the only other officer killed, was shot at his gun soon after. This fatal contest inaugurated the "war of posts" which has since raged in Virginia.] THE HORRORS OF SAN DOMINGO. CHAPTER IV. THE BUCCANEERS--FLIBUSTIERS--TORTUGA--SETTLEMENT OF THE WESTERN PART OF SAN DOMINGO BY THE FRENCH. Peaceable voyagers in the West Indies were much astonished at their first sight of certain men, who might have been a new species of native, generated with slight advances upon the old stock by the principle of selection, or spontaneous growths of a soil well guanoed by ferocity. They sported the scarlet suit of the Carib, but of a dye less innocent, as if the fated islands imparted this color to the men who preyed upon them. A cotton shirt hung on their shoulders, and a pair of cotton drawers struggled vainly to cover their thighs: you had to look very closely to pronounce upon the material, it was so stained with blood and fat. Their bronzed faces and thick necks were hirsute, as if overgrown with moss, tangled or crispy. Their feet were tied up in the raw hides of hogs or beeves just slaughtered, from which they also frequently extemporized drawers, cut while reeking, and left to stiffen to the shape of the legs. A heavy-stocked musket, made at Dieppe or Nantes, with a barrel four and a half feet long, and carrying sixteen balls to the pound,[6] lay over the shoulder, a calabash full of powder, with a wax stopper, was slung behind, and a belt of crocodile's skin, with four knives and a bayonet, went round the waist. These individuals, if the term is applicable to the phenomena in question, were Buccaneers.[7]