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
These Spanish hunters did not rough it like the Buccaneers, and kept
horses to carry their bales. They were particular in their food, and ate
bread and cassava with their beef; drank wine and brandy; and were very
choice in their fruit and preserves. Gay in their dress, they prided
themselves on their white linen. Every separate hunting field had its
own customs. At Campeachy, where the ground was swampy, the
logwood-cutters frequently shot the oxen from a canoe, and were
sometimes pursued by a wounded beast, who would try to sink the boat.
When the woodmen killed a bull, they cut it into quarters, and, taking
out all the bones, cut a hole in the centre of each piece large enough
to pass their heads through, and trudged home with it to their tents on
the shore. If they grew tired or were pursued, they cut off a portion of
the meat and lightened their load.
The Spaniards, less poor, greedy, and thoughtless than the English and
French adventurers, killed only the bulls and old cows, and left the
younger ones to breed. The French were notorious for their wanton waste,
using oxen merely as marks for their bullets, and as utterly indifferent
to the future as Autolycus, who "slept out the thought of it." About
1650 the wild cattle of Jamaica were entirely destroyed, and the
Governor procured a fresh supply from Cuba.
Whenever the oxen grew scarce, they became wilder and more ferocious. In
some places no hunter dared to fire at them if alone, nor ever ventured
into their pastures unattended. All animals grow shy if frequently
pursued, and no fish are so unapproachable as those of a much frequented
stream. Dampierre says that at Beef Island the old bulls who had once
been wounded, when they saw the hunters or heard their muskets, would
instantly form into a square, with their cows in the rear and the calves
in the middle, turning as the hunters turned, and presenting their horns
like a cluster of bayonets. It then became necessary to beat the woods
for stragglers. A beast mortally wounded always made at the hunter; but
if only grazed by the bullet it ran away. A cow was thought to be more
dangerous than a bull, as the former charged with its eyes open, and the
latter with them closed. The danger was often imminent. One of
Dampierre's messmates ventured into the savannah, about a mile from the
huts, and coming within shot of a bull wounded it desperately. The bull,
however, had strength enough to pursue and overtake the logwood-cutter
before he could load again, to trample him, and gore him in the thigh.
Then, faint with loss of blood, it reeled down dead, and fell heavily
beside the bleeding and groaning hunter. His comerade, coming the next
morning to seek for the man, found him weak and almost dying, and,
taking him on his back, bore him to his hut, where he was soon cured.
The rapidity of such cures is peculiar to savages, or men who devote
their whole life to muscular exertion; for the flesh of the South Sea
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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