neers, a hearty brave toss-pot, a
trump, a true twopenny"--why, then, they would spend thirty or forty
pounds apiece in a drinking bout aboard his ship, "carousing and firing
of Guns three or four days together." They were a careless company,
concerned rather in "the squandering of life away" than in its
preservation. Drink and song, and the firing of guns, and a week's work
chipping blood-wood, and then another drunkenness, was the story of
their life there. Any "sober men" who came thither were soon "debauched"
by "the old Standards," and took to "Wickedness" and "careless Rioting."
Those who found the work too hard used to go hunting in the woods.
Often enough they marched to the woods in companies, to sack the Indian
villages, to bring away women for their solace, and men slaves to sell
at Jamaica. They also robbed the Indians' huts of honey, cocoa, and
maize, but then the Indians were "very melancholy and thoughtful" and
plainly designed by God as game for logwood cutters.

In the end the Spaniards fell upon the logwood men and carried them away
to Mexico and Vera Cruz, sending some to the silver mines, and selling
the others to tradesmen. As slaves they passed the next few years, till
they escaped to the coast. One of those who escaped told how he saw a
Captain Buckenham, once a famous man at those old drinking bouts, and
owner of a sugar ship, working as a slave in the city of Mexico. "He saw
Captain Buckenham, with a Log chained to his Leg, and a Basket at his
Back, crying Bread about the Streets for a Baker his Master."

In this society of logwood cutters Dampier served a brief
apprenticeship. He must have heard many strange tales, and jolly songs,
around the camp fires of his mates, but none of them, apparently, were
fit to print. He went hunting cattle, and got himself "bushed," or
marooned--that is, lost--and had a narrow escape from dying in the
woods. He helped at the cutting and trimming of the red wood, and at the
curing of the hides of the slaughtered steers. When ships arrived he
took his sup of rum, and fired his pistol, with the best of them. Had he
stayed there any length of time he would have become a master logwood
merchant, and so "gotten an Estate"; but luck was against him.

In June 1676, when he was recovering from a guinea-worm, a creature
which nests in one's ankle, and causes great torment, a storm, or
"South," reduced the logwood cutters of those parts to misery. The South
was "long fore