session, but would have gone off to sea, as on the former occasion, had the season not been too far advanced for him to find a ship. He therefore remained at Largo during the winter; whether assisting his father at his trade, or going about idle, we do not know. In the spring of 1702 he seized an opportunity of going to England; and a short time afterward we find him engaged to proceed with the celebrated Dampier on a buccaneering expedition to the South Seas. That our readers may understand the nature of this expedition, during which that extraordinary event happened to Selkirk which has made his name so famous, it will be necessary to give a brief account of the people called the buccaneers.

THE BUCCANEERS-SELKIRK JOINS A PRIVATEERING EXPEDITION UNDER DAMPIER-AC

COUNT OF THE VOYAGE.

As is well known, the Spaniards were the first to discover and take possession of the jands in the new world, including the choicest islands of the West Indies, and the rich coasts of South America and Mexico. It was not long, however, before adventurers of other nations, especially French, English, and Dutch, pressed into the newly-discovered seas, and attempted to procure a share of the good things

with which the American islands and shores abounded. The Spaniards, whose savage cruelties to the unfortunate natives of the lands they had discovered had made them absolute lords of every portion of American ground on which they had planted themselves, resisted the new-comers with all their strength; attacked their ships, drove them out of the spots where they endeavored to found their small settlements, and in a hundred other ways annoyed and injured them. The consequence was, that the English, French, and Dutch adventurers who had congregated in the West Indian Archipelago were unable to settle down permanently in any place, but were obliged to keep up a continual war with the Spaniards, in order to maintain their existence. Hayti or St. Domingo, being the earliest and most flourishing of the Spanish settlements, became the principal haunt of these rivals and enemies of the Spaniards. A number of French adventurers, whom the Spaniards in their narrow jealousy had driven out of the island of St. Christophers, took up their headquarters in the small island of Tortuga, adjoining the northern coast of St. Domingo, and convenient as a station from which they could make expeditions into the latter island, for the purpose of hunting the wild cattle and swine with which it swarmed.

This, of course, increased the animosity of the Spaniards, who resented these incursions upon their territory, and attacked the intruders without mercy whenever they surprised them in the woods of St. Domingo.

Compelled thus to associate themselves for mutual safety in bands of considerable force, and joined by adventurers of other nations, the Bucaniers, as the French were called, from the custom of bucanning, or drying and smoking the flesh of the animals which they killed, became a formidable body. Many of them, tired of the miserable life which they led on shore, embarked in vessels, and sought a desperate but congenial occupation in attacking and plundering the richly-laden ships which were constantly sailing from the Spanish colonies to the mother country. Allured by the charms of this lawless mode of life, fresh adventurers arrived from France and England in ships fitted out for the purpose, with the permission of the French and English governments, both of which were eager to damage the Spanish interests; and thus, toward the close of the seventeenth century, the West Indian Archipelago, and the shores of South America, swarmed with crews of pirates, who, under the name of privateers, chased every merchant vessel that made its appearance. When they came up with such a vessel quitting

an American harbor, they boarded her with the most reckless audacity, either murdered the sailors and passengers, or made them prisoners, and shared the cargo according to their own rules of equity. In consequence of their ravages, the Spanish colonists in the new world became less and less disposed to risk their property in commerce, and the intercourse which had hitherto been kept up between the colonies and the mother country was greatly interrupted.

Disappointed of prizes at sea, the buccaneers did not hesitate to make up for the loss by storming and plundering the Spanish settlements on the American coasts. Landing in the night-time on the beach, close by some illguarded town or village, they would surprise the inhabitants while asleep, and either carry off all the wealth they could find, or sell back their own property to the wretched inhabitants for a heavy ransom. The buccaneers were, in fact, a floating nation of robbers-a revival, in more modern times, of the Norwegian sea-kings. They had their own rude notions of justice; they even professed religion in the midst of their licentiousness; and many of them never gave chase to a flag without falling down on their knees on the deck to pray God that he would grant them the victory and a valuable

cargo. The more respectable among them defended their mode of life, by saying that the injuries they perpetrated upon the Spaniards were a just retribution upon that nation for their cruelties to the Indians, or sought shelter under the general usage of the time, which authorized the various governments of Europe to grant licenses to private adventurers to harass and destroy the ships and ports belonging to nations with which they were at war. These excuses, joined with the love of adventure and the desire of wealth, the prospect of attaining which was so great in the buccaneering mode of life, operated as motives sufficient to induce a number of persons belonging to families of good repute to engage in the trade; nor did they incur disgrace by so doing. As we have already seen, young Selkirk, although he was the son of a stanch Scottish Presbyterian, and had been subject from his infancy to the wholesome impressions of respectable society, had not scrupled to join the rovers of the South Seas. His experience of the toils and dangers of such a life had not cured him of his propensity to adventure; and now, for the second time, he leaves his father's house to become a privateer.

William Dampier, the originator and commander of the expedition which Selkirk now