About the year 1661, logwood became in great request; and as the indolent Spaniards to whom the country at that time belonged failed to supply the market, several English adventurers, without first asking permission, settled or squatted on the uninhabited coast of Yucatan, and made the woods near Laguna de Terminos ring with the sound of their industrious axe. Many years passed without the Spaniards taking any notice of the intruders; but as these, growing bolder by sufferance, began to penetrate farther into the country, to build houses and form plantations, as if they had been masters of the soil, their jealousy was at length aroused, and in 1680 the English settlers were forcibly ejected. This triumph on the part of their adversaries was, however, but transitory; and a few months after our sturdy countrymen were again cutting their logwood as busily as ever, in spite of the enmity of man and the innumerable hardships of their laborious occupation. Their mode of life is thus quaintly described by Dampier in his Voyage to the Bay of Campeachy:--‘The logwood-cutters inhabit the creeks of the lagunes in small companies, building their huts by the creeks’ sides for the benefit of the sea-breeze, as near the logwood groves as they can, and often removing to be near their business. Though they build their huts but slightly, yet they take care to thatch them very well with palmetto leaves, to prevent the rains, which are there very violent, from soaking in. For their bedding, they raise a wooden frame, three feet and a half above ground on one side of the house, and stick up four stakes at each corner, to fasten their curtains, out of which there is no sleeping for mosquitoes. Another frame they raise, covered with earth, for a hearth, to dress their victuals; and a third to sit at, when they eat it. During the wet season, the land where the logwood grows is so overflowed that they step from their beds into the water, perhaps two feet deep, and continue standing in the wet all day till they go to bed again; but, nevertheless, account it the best season for doing a good day’s labour in. Some fell the trees, others saw and cut them into convenient logs, and one chips off the bark, and he is commonly the principal man; and when a tree is so thick that after it is logged it remains still too great a burden for one man, it is blown up with gunpowder. The logwood-cutters are generally sturdy strong fellows, and will carry burthens of three or four hundredweight. In some places they go a-hunting wild cattle every Saturday to provide themselves with beef for the week following. When they have killed a beef they cut it into quarters, and taking out the bones, each man makes a hole in the middle of his quarter, just big enough for his head to go through, then puts it on like a frock and trudgeth home; and, if he chanceth to tire, he cuts off some of it and throws it away.’