of Havana.

Such were the buccaneers,--desperate, merciless, and insatiate in
their lust for plunder. So numerous did they finally become, that no
merchant dared to send a ship to the West Indies; and the pirates,
finding that they had fairly exterminated their game, were fain to
turn landwards for further booty. It was an Englishman that showed the
sea rovers this new plan of pillage; one Louis Scott, who descended
upon the town of Campeche, and, after stripping the place to the bare
walls, demanded that a heavy tribute be paid him, in default of which
he would burn the town. Loaded with booty, he sailed back to the
buccaneers' haunts in the Tortugas. This expedition was the example
that the buccaneers followed for the next few years. City after city
fell a prey to the demoniac attacks of the lawless rovers. Houses and
churches were sacked, towns given to the flames, rich and poor
plundered alike; murder was rampant; and men and women were subjected
to the most horrid tortures, to extort information as to buried
treasures.

Two great names stand out pre-eminent amid the host of outlaws that
took part in this reign of rapine,--l'Olonoise and Sir Henry Morgan.
The desperate exploits of these two worthies would, if recounted, fill
volumes; and probably no more extraordinary narrative of cruelty,
courage, suffering, and barbaric luxury could be fabricated. Morgan
was a Welshman, an emigrant, who, having worked out as a slave the
cost of his passage across the ocean, took immediate advantage of his
freedom to take up the trade of piracy. For him was no pillaging of
paltry merchant-ships. He demanded grander operations, and his bands
of desperadoes assumed the proportions of armies. Many were the towns
that suffered from the bloody visitations of Morgan and his men.
Puerto del Principe yielded up to them three hundred thousand pieces
of eight, five hundred head of cattle, and many prisoners. Porto Bello
was bravely defended against the barbarians; and the stubbornness of
the defence so enraged Morgan, that he swore that no quarter should be
given the defenders. And so when some hours later the chief fortress
surrendered, the merciless buccaneer locked its garrison in the
guard-room, set a torch to the magazine, and sent castle and garrison
flying into the air. Maracaibo and Gibraltar next fell into the
clutches of the pirate. At the latter town, finding himself caught in
a river with three men-of-war anchored at its mouth