having the buccaneers among them, for no sooner had
the latter returned from a successful expedition than they spent, with
lavish hand, the money which they had made.

While it is true that between these forays the pirates were given to the
wildest excesses, and were anything but a desirable addition to a
community, yet there are always plenty of people who are willing to
profit by the wastefulness and dissipations of others. Many of the
buccaneers, accordingly, had homes which they visited in the intervals
of their cruises, where, although their business was well known, they
were in a certain sense respected. However, before the pirates were
wholly subdued, they had become less and less acceptable residents in
any community, and finally were at enmity with every soul not in their
own occupation.

That these buccaneers had a large amount of physical bravery, goes
without saying; for only a man who feared nothing could undertake such
apparently hopeless tasks as these wild plunderers carried to a
successful conclusion. In fact many times they were successful for the
reason that the vessels or towns they attacked deemed themselves secure
from attack by so small a force as the pirates could muster. They were
inured to hardship and willing to undergo any amount of pain and
suffering, if they could but gather the riches for which they sought.
The accounts of their adventures are filled with description of daring
deeds, which if undertaken in a better cause would have made the men
famous for all time.

The beginning of these expeditions may be placed at about 1625, and the
last important cruise of the pirates was made in 1688. After the latter
date they gradually dispersed, and the buccaneers appeared no more. In
1664, Mansveldt, who was one of the ablest of the pirate chiefs,
conceived the idea of forming an independent government with a flag of
its own, and locating his capital at Santa Katalina. His early death
prevented him from realizing his purpose; and though his successor, the
famous Henry Morgan, attempted to carry out the plan, it met with such
opposition from the Governor of Jamaica that it was definitely
abandoned. It was under the leadship of this same Morgan that the
buccaneers reached the height of their reputation, and executed their
most daring and successful raids. Among Morgan's performances was the
capture of the town of Puerto del Principe in Cuba, and the cities of
Porto Bello, Maracaibo and Gibralta