The Monarchs of the Main; Or, Adventures of the Buccaneers. Volume 1 (of 3) — John Shaqi
The Monarchs of the Main; Or, Adventures of the Buccaneers. Volume 1 (of 3)Thornbury, Walter
History
The Monarchs of the Main; Or, Adventures of the Buccaneers. Volume 1 (of 3)
Thornbury, Walter
Buccaneers; Pirates; Spanish Main
In Oexmelin's _Histoire des Aventuriers_, the hunter is represented with
bare feet, but this could not have been usual, when we remember the
danger of chigoes, snakes, and scorpions, not to speak of prickly pear
coverts and thorny brakes. From their leather waist belt hung a short,
heavy _machete_ or sabre, and an alligator skin case of Dutch hunting
knives. On their heads they wore a leather skull-cap, shaped like our
modern jockey's, with a peak in front. They wore their hair falling
wildly on their shoulders, and their huge beards increased the ferocity
of their appearance. Oexmelin particularly mentions the beard, although
no existing engraving of the Buccaneer chiefs represents them with this
grim ornament. According to Charlevoix, some of them wore a shirt, and
over this a sort of brewer's apron, or coarse sacking tunic, open at the
sides. From this shirt being always stained with blood, perhaps
sometimes purposely dipped into it, the Abbé Reynal supposes that such a
shirt was the necessary dress of the Buccaneer. Oexmelin says that as his
vessel approached St. Domingo, "a Buccaneers' canoe came off with six
men at the paddles, whose appearance excited the astonishment of all
those on board, who had never before been out of France. They wore a
small linen tunic and short drawers, reaching only half down the thigh.
It required one to look close to see if the shirt was linen or not, so
stained was it with the blood which had dripped from the animals they
kill and carry home. All of them had large beards, and carried at their
girdle a case of cayman skin, in which were four knives and a bayonet."
Like the Canadian trappers, or, indeed, sportsmen in general, they were
peculiarly careful of their muskets, which were made expressly for them
in France, the best makers being Brachie of Dieppe, and Gelu of Nantes.
These guns were about four feet and a half long, and were known
everywhere as "Buccaneering pieces." The stocks were square and heavy,
with a hollow for the shoulder, and they were all made of the same
calibre, single barrel, and carrying balls sixteen to the pound. Every
hunter took with him fifteen or twenty pounds of powder, the best of
which came from Cherbourg. They kept it in waxed calabashes to secure it
from the damp, having no shelter or hut that would keep out the West
Indian rains. Their bullet pouch and powder horn hung on either side,
and their small tents they carried, rolled up tight like bandoliers, at
their waist, for they slept wherever they halted, and generally in their
clothes.
We have no room and no colours bright enough to paint the chief features
of the Indian woods, the cloven cherry, that resembles the arbutus, the
cocoa with its purple pods, the red _bois immortel_, the stunted bastard
cedar, the logwood with its sweet blossom and hawthorn-like leaf, the
cashew with its golden fruit, the oleander, the dock-like yam, and the
calabash tree.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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