nor could repose with a feeling of entire security, he
euphuistically called his "dove-cote." The dove-cote was not finished
any too soon, for the Spaniards of San Domingo in 1643 determined to
destroy this rising power in their neighbourhood, and sent against
Levasseur a force of 500 or 600 men. When they tried to land within a
half gunshot of the shore, however, they were greeted with a discharge
of artillery from the fort, which sank one of the vessels and forced the
rest to retire. The Spaniards withdrew to a place two leagues to
leeward, where they succeeded in disembarking, but fell into an ambush
laid by Levasseur, lost, according to the French accounts, between 100
and 200 men, and fled to their ships and back to Hispaniola. With this
victory the reputation of Levasseur spread far and wide throughout the
islands, and for ten years the Spaniards made no further attempt to
dislodge the French settlement.[100]

Planters, hunters and corsairs now came in greater numbers to Tortuga.
The hunters, using the smaller island merely as a headquarters for
supplies and a retreat in time of danger, penetrated more boldly than
ever into the interior of Hispaniola, plundering the Spanish plantations
in their path, and establishing settlements on the north shore at Port
Margot and Port de Paix. Corsairs, after cruising and robbing along the
Spanish coasts, retired to Tortuga to refit and find a market for their
spoils. Plantations of tobacco and sugar were cultivated, and although
the soil never yielded such rich returns as upon the other islands,
Dutch and French trading ships frequently resorted there for these
commodities, and especially for the skins prepared by the hunters,
bringing in exchange brandy, guns, powder and cloth. Indeed, under the
active, positive administration of Levasseur, Tortuga enjoyed a degree
of prosperity which almost rivalled that of the French settlements in
the Leeward Islands.

The term "buccaneer," though usually applied to the corsairs who in the
seventeenth century ravaged the Spanish possessions in the West Indies
and the South Seas, should really be restricted to these cattle-hunters
of west and north-west Hispaniola. The flesh of the wild-cattle was
cured by the hunters after a fashion learnt from the Caribbee Indians.
The meat was cut into long strips, laid upon a grate or hurdle
constructed of green sticks, and dried over a slow wood fire fed with
bones and the trimmings of the hide of the