The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863, page 129 by Various Authors
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who were called thus from the manner in which they prepared meats for their food, whether flesh of beasts or of men. For this purpose they constructed a sort of grate or hurdle, consisting of twenty bars of Brazil wood, laid crosswise half a foot from each other, upon which the flesh of prisoners of war or of game was laid in pieces, and a thick smoke raised beneath from properly selected combustibles, which gave to the meat the vermil color and a delightful smell. These fixtures, thus adjusted, were called buccans, and the process of curing the meat buccaning. The hunters, having adopted this process from the savages, were like them called buccaneers. In process of time the name was applied to the sea robbers as well as to the hunters; and when piracy became the general profession as a substitute for planting and the chase, all were called buccaneers indiscriminately.
Previously to the great and sudden augmentation of their forces, by the immigration from St. Christopher's about the year 1660, the buccaneers had taken possession of Tortuga, the geographical position and character of which island was well suited to their commercial and piratical purposes. This little island had been occupied by a few Spaniards as early as 1591; but their numbers were so small as not to interfere with the object of the buccaneers, while its rocky conformation afforded peculiar facilities for defence in the event of attack.
The greatly increasing numbers of the buccaneers at length aroused the colonial voluptuaries of Spain to a sense of their danger. It was perceived that while the colonists were dwindling away, the outlaws were becoming so formidable in their numbers that they soon might be enabled to contest for the mastery of the island of Hispaniola itself. They therefore commenced a war upon them, and not being able to prosecute it with sufficient vigor themselves, they called to their aid troops from the other Spanish islands, and also from the continent. With these auxiliaries the ba