nest goods.

Not long after this time the British cruisers broke up the pirate hordes
which had long infested the West Indies. Their haunts were taken and
they had to flee. Some of them became smugglers, landing their goods on
Amelia Island, on the coast of Florida. Others sought the bays of
Louisiana, where they kept up their old trade.

The Lafittes now found it to their advantage to handle the goods of
these buccaneers, in which they posed as honest merchants. Later on they
made piracy their trade, the whole fleet of the rovers coming under
their control. Throwing off the cloak of honesty, they openly defied the
laws. Prize goods and negroes were introduced into New Orleans with
little effort at secrecy, and were sold in disregard of the law and the
customs. It was well known that the Baratarian rovers were pirates, but
the weak efforts to dislodge them failed and the government was openly
despised.

Making Barataria Bay their head-quarters and harbor of refuge, the
pirates fortified Grande Terre, and built on it their dwellings and
store-houses. On Grande Isle farms were cultivated and orange-groves
planted. On another island, named the Temple, they held auctions for the
sale of their plunder, the purchasers smuggling it up the bayous and
introducing it under cover of night into New Orleans, where there was
nothing to show its source, though suspicion was rife. Such was
Barataria until the war with England began, and such it continued
through this war till 1814, the Lafittes and their pirate followers
flourishing in their desperate trade.

We might go on to tell a gruesome story of fearful deeds by these
bandits of the sea; of vessels plundered and scuttled, and sailors made
to walk the plank of death; of rich spoil won by ruthless murder, and
wild orgies on the shores of Grande Terre. But of all this there is
little record, and the lives of these pirates yield us none of the
scenes of picturesque wickedness and wholesale murder which embellish
the stories of Blackbeard, Morgan, and other sea-rovers of old. Yet the
career of the Lafittes has an historical interest which makes it worth
the telling.

It was not until 1814, during the height of the war with England, that
the easy-going Creoles of New Orleans grew indignant enough at the bold
defiance of law by the Lafittes to make a vigorous effort to stop it. It
was high time, for the buccaneers had grown so bold as to fire on the
revenue officers of the governm