Captain William Kidd was the most notorious of the captains engaged in the Madagascar trade, but the story of his career is interesting chiefly because of the light it throws upon the state of civilization then prevailing. His troubles began when Lord Bellomont and some other noble lords of England fitted out a private armed ship to go to Madagascar and rob the pirates. Bellomont describes this venture as "very honest." Kidd was chosen to command the ship--_The Adventure Galley_. On arriving at Madagascar, he found that the pirates had a stronger ship than his, and he was afraid to attack them. The crew had been shipped on the usual privateer plan of no prize, no pay, and on finding they were to get no prize they became mutinous. Many of them deserted to the pirates of the island. In a half-hearted effort to maintain discipline among those remaining, Kidd hit a man with a bucket and happened to kill him. Then he went cruising, pirate fashion, and captured a ship belonging to "the Moors," which was valued at £30,000. In this ship Kidd sailed for home. He learned, on the way, that he had been proclaimed as a pirate. Bellomont had been accused by political enemies in Parliament of fitting out a piratical cruiser, and being unwilling to face the charge by telling the facts frankly, he shuffled, told falsehoods, and eventually made a scapegoat of Kidd, who was hanged (May 12, 1701). That this man, who at worst had killed one man in a sea brawl, and had taken one ship, should have had ballads written about him in which he was described as "bloody" is one of the most remarkable facts in the history of the sea. But that he should have been referred to ever since in all literature as a typical pirate is still more remarkable. A book, Hughson's _Carolina Pirates and Colonial Commerce_, has been written to tell about the deeds of such men as Bane, Stede Bonnet, Moody, and Edward Thatch, or Blackbeard, but it has little to say about the influence of the pirates upon commerce, because there is little to say. The pirates mentioned captured a few ships, American as well as English, and for brief periods interrupted the trade of various ports. On the other hand, some of them supplied the colonists with low-priced goods, and at times the only coin in circulation was that brought in by the freebooters.