cattle and hogs which had been imported from Spain
ran wild, increasing and multiplying at a marvellous
rate in the mountains of Hispaniola, and they furnished
the remnants of tribes with the means of
buying such trifles brought by the traders as took
their fancy, and afforded supplies of provision and
large profits to the traders themselves. T he settlers
of the coast were not averse to the illicit traffic
when they dared to encourage it; and when they
did not, the “ rovers ” were not averse to forcing it
upon them, in spite of their feeble “ authorities.”
Perhaps the most piratical of these traders at first
were the Frenchmen, who were called corsairs—ra
term originally the same as courser, or cruiser, and
hence practically synonymous with “ rover.” In
1536, one of these laid Havana— then a “ c i t y ”
barely seventeen years old, and really a little unprotected
settlement— under contribution and forced
from it a ransom of seven hundred ducats. Three
Spanish vessels presuming to chase him afterwards,
he captured them and went back and exacted another
ransom as a penalty. In 1538, a French corsair
entered the harbour of Santiago de Cuba and had a
lively fight with an armed Spanish vessel, which
was kept up for three days. Concluding that no
profitable bargain could be struck at that port, the
Frenchman quietly took leave under cover of night.
T he same year Havana was sacked and burnt. This
kind of dealing with the people was kept up for
many years, and in 1554 Havana was again destroyed
in an effort to trade with it. When the
Netherlands was at war with Spain in consequence
of the cruel policy of Philip I I ., after the loss of the
seven provinces, the Dutch began to take a hand in
this West Indian traffic. It was all very discouraging
to Spain’s trade monopoly with her American
colonies, and dangerous to the galleons on the way
from Mexico and the Spanish Main with ducats and
doubloons. Forts were built, some of which still
frown upon the sunny harbours; coast-guards were
established, and Spanish warships patrolled the
waters, but the depredations did not cease. A t
the same time the enterprising gold-seekers had
mostly gone to Mexico, or were exploring the great
central isthmus or the southern continent, and the
planters were having a hard time to get work done
without doing it themselves. T h e colonies were
merely struggling along in those trying times.
I t was from 1562, to 1567 that Captain Hawkins,
the Sir John and M. P. of a few years later, made
his three trips to Sierra Leone and the Guinea coast
to capture negroes and sell them for slaves in the
Hispaniola market. He took back cargoes of sugar,
ginger, and hides, which he disposed of to advantage
in Europe. It was a profitable traffic, and
carried on devoutly. Hawkins’s largest ship on his
second slave-trading voyage, one of seven hundred
tons, was called the Jesus, and after escaping from
a gale with his human cargo, he wrote: “ T he A l mighty
God, who never suffereth his elect to perish,
sent us on the 16th of February the ordinary breeze. ”
Hawkins had difficulty in disposing of his cargo on
this trip, and got a French corsair to help force some
of the living merchandise upon colonists who did