ivision of the skins and dried meat,
and repaired to Tortuga or one of the French settlements on the coast of
Hispaniola to recoup his stock of ammunition and spend the rest of his
gains in a wild carouse of drunkenness and debauchery. His money gone,
he returned again to the hunt. The cow-killers, as they had neither wife
nor children, commonly associated in pairs with the right of inheriting
from each other, a custom which was called "matelotage." These private
associations, however, did not prevent the property of all from being in
a measure common. Their mode of settling quarrels was the most
primitive--the duel. In other things they governed themselves by a
certain "coutumier," a medley of bizarre laws which they had originated
among themselves. At any attempt to bring them under civilised rules,
the reply always was, "telle etoit la coutume de la cote"; and that
definitely closed the matter. They based their rights thus to live upon
the fact, they said, of having passed the Tropic, where, borrowing from
the sailor's well-known superstition, they pretended to have drowned all
their former obligations.[104] Even their family names they discarded,
and the saying was in those days that one knew a man in the Isles only
when he was married. From a life of this sort, cruising against Spanish
ships, if not an unmixed good, was at least always a desirable
recreation. Every Spanish prize brought into Tortuga, moreover, was an
incitement to fresh adventure against the common foe. The "gens de la
cote," as they called themselves, ordinarily associated a score or more
together, and having taken or built themselves a canoe, put to sea with
intent to seize a Spanish barque or some other coasting vessel. With
silent paddles, under cover of darkness, they approached the
unsuspecting prey, killed the frightened sailors or drove them
overboard, and carried the prize to Tortuga. There the raiders either
dispersed to their former occupations, or gathered a larger crew of
congenial spirits and sailed away for bigger game.

All the Jesuit historians of the West Indies, Dutertre, Labat and
Charlevoix, have left us accounts of the manners and customs of the
buccaneers. The Dutch physician, Exquemelin, who lived with the
buccaneers for several years, from 1668 to 1674, and wrote a picturesque
narrative from materials at his disposal, has also been a source for the
ideas of most later writers on the subject. It may not be out of place
to qu