the same to the Spaniards; a war of attempted extermination was waged
alike against the peaceful inhabitants of Hispaniola, now Hayti, and
upon the bearded and hardy seamen from Northern Europe. Under this
treatment the natives weakened and gradually disappeared; but the
buccaneers became more and more numerous and powerful.

The buccaneers were not unlike that class of men known in our western
country as cowboys. Young fellows of good families from England and
France often determined to embrace a life of adventure, and possibly
profit, and sailed out to the West Indies to get gold and hides, and to
fight Spaniards. Frequently they dropped their family names and assumed
others more suitable to roving freebooters, and, like the bold young
fellows who ride over our western plains, driving cattle and shooting
Indians, they adopted a style of dress as free and easy, but probably
not quite so picturesque, as that of the cowboy. They soon became a very
rough set of fellows, in appearance as well as action, endeavoring in
every way to let the people of the western world understand that they
were absolutely free and independent of the manners and customs, as well
as of the laws of their native countries.

So well was this independence understood, that when the buccaneers
became strong enough to inflict some serious injury upon the settlements
in the West Indies, and the Spanish court remonstrated with Queen
Elizabeth on account of what had been done by some of her subjects, she
replied that she had nothing to do with these buccaneers, who, although
they had been born in England, had ceased for the time to be her
subjects, and the Spaniards must defend themselves against them just as
if they were an independent nation.

But it is impossible for men who have been brought up in civilized