The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 3 — John Shaqi
The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 3Whymper, Frederick
History
The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 3
Whymper, Frederick
Adventure and adventurers; Arctic regions; Ocean; Voyages around the world
“The Governor of Tortuga, Monsieur Ogeron, finding that the wild dogs
killed so many of the wild boars that the hunters of that island had much
ado to find any, fearing lest that common sustenance of the island should
fail, sent for a great quantity of poison from France to destroy the wild
mastiffs. This was done anno 1668, by commanding horses to be killed and
empoisoned, and laid open at certain places where the wild dogs used to
resort. This being continued for six months, there were killed an
incredible number; and yet all this could not exterminate and destroy the
race, or scarce diminish them, their number appearing almost as large as
before. These wild dogs are easily tamed among men, even as tame as
ordinary house-dogs. The hunters of those parts, whenever they find a wild
bitch with whelps, commonly take away the puppies and bring them home,
which, being grown up, they hunt much better than other dogs.
“But here the curious reader may perhaps inquire how so many wild dogs
came here. The occasion was, the Spaniards having possessed these isles,
found them peopled with Indians—a barbarous people, sensual and brutish,
hating all labour, and only inclined to killing and making war against
their neighbours: not out of ambition, but only because they agreed not
with themselves in some common terms of language; and perceiving the
dominion of the Spaniards laid great restrictions upon their lazy and
brutish customs, they conceived an irreconcilable hatred against them, but
especially because they saw them take possession of their kingdoms and
dominions. Hereupon they made against them all the resistance they could,
opposing everywhere their designs to the utmost; and the Spaniards,
finding themselves cruelly hated by the Indians, and nowhere secure from
their treacheries, resolved to extirpate and ruin them, since they could
neither tame them by civility nor conquer them with the sword. But the
Indians—it being their custom to make the woods their chief places of
defence—at present made these their refuge whenever they fled from the
Spaniards. Hereupon, those first conquerors of the new world made use of
dogs to range and search the intricatest thickets of woods and forests for
those their implacable and unconquerable enemies; thus they forced them to
leave their old refuge, and submit to the sword, seeing no milder usage
would do it; hereupon they killed some of them, and, quartering their
bodies, placed them in the highways, that others might take warning from
such a punishment. But this severity proved of ill consequence, for
instead of frighting them and reducing them to civility, they conceived
such horror of the Spaniards that they resolved to detest and fly their
sight for ever; hence the greatest part died in caves and subterraneous
places of the woods and mountains, in which places I myself have often
seen great numbers of human bones. The Spaniards, finding no more Indians
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