BUCCANEERS, a celebrated association of piratical adventurers, who, from the com mencement of the second quarter of the 16th c., to the end of the 17th, maintained them selves in the Caribbean seas, at first by systematic reprisals on the Spaniards, latterly, by less justifiable and indiscriminate piracy. The name is derived from the Caribbee boucan, a term for preserved meat, smoke-dried in a peculiar manner. From this the French adventurers formed the verb boucaner and the noun boucanier, which was adopted by the English; while, singularly enough, the French used, in preference. the word flibustier (see FILIBUSTERS), a corruption of our "freebooter.' The B. were also sometimes called "brethren of the coast." The arrogant assumption by the Spaniards of a divine right—sanctioned by the pope's bull—to the whole new world, was not, of course, to be tolerated by the enterprising mariners of England and France; and the enormous cruelties practiced by them upon all foreign interlopers, of which the history of that time is full, naturally led to an association for mutual defense among the adven turers of all other nations, but particularly anion; the English and French. The funda mental principles of their policy—for they, in course of time, formed distinct commu nitics—were close mutual alliance, and mortal war with all that was Spanish. Their simple code of laws bound them to a common participation in the necessaries of life; locks and bars were proscribed as an insult to the general honor; and every man had his comrade, who stood by him when alive, and succeeded to his property after his death. The principal center of their wild and predatory life was for some time the island of Tor tuga, near St. Domingo. When they were not hunting Spaniards, or being hunted themselves, their chief occupation and means of subsistence was the chase. From the flesh of wild cattle they made their " boucan ;" their skins and tallow they sold or bar tered to Dutch and other traders. The history of these men embraces, as may be sup posed, narratives of cruelty and bloodshed unsurpassed in the annals of crime. It has,
however, not a few stories of high and romantic adventure, of chivalrous valor, and brilliant generalship. Among the "great captains" whose names figure most promi nently in the records of buccaneering, were. the Frenchman Montbars, surnamed by the terrible title of "the exterminator;" his countrymen, Peter of Dieppe, surnamed "the great"—as truly, perhaps, as others so distinguished—and L'Olommas, Michael de Busco, and Bartolomeo de Portuguez, Mansvelt, and Van Horn. Pre-eminent, however, among them all was the Welshman, Henry Morgan, who organized fleets and armies, took strong fortresses and rich cities, and displayed throughout the bold genius of a born commander. Ile it was that led the way for the B. to the southern ocean, by his daring march in 1670 across the isthmus of Panama to the city of that name, which he took and plundered after a desperate battle. This brilliant but most unscrupulous personage was knighted by Charles II., and became deputy-governor of Jamaica. A. higher subordination of the love of Fold to the passion for dominion in him, might probably have made him emperor of the 11 est Indies, some dream of which seems at one time to have occupied his mind. In 1680 and 1689, extensive buccanceringexpedi tions were made to the Pacific, even as far as the coasts of China, of which the best record is preserved in the lively pages of William Dampier, himself an important part ner in these bold adventures. The war between France and Britain, after the accession of William III., dissolved the ancient alliance of the French and English buccaneers. After the peace of Ryswiek, and the accession of the Bourbon Philip . to the Spanish crown (1701), they finally disappeared, to make way for a race of mere cut-throats and vulgar desperadoes, not yet utterly extinct. The last great event in their history was the capture of Carthagcna in 1697, where the booty was enormous.—See the Histories of Burney and Thornberry, Dampier's Voyages, and the .Narratires of Wafer, Ringrove, and Sharp.