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- 6758
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- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.413Z
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- 6707
- text
- commanding the most quiet scenery—what do you think I saw? Seats which
might have served Brahmins and presidents of peace societies. Fine old
ruins of what had once been symmetric lounges of stone and turf, they
bore every mark both of artificialness and age, and were, undoubtedly,
made by the Buccaneers. One had been a long sofa, with back and arms,
just such a sofa as the poet Gray might have loved to throw himself
upon, his Crebillon in hand.
“Though they sometimes tarried here for months at a time, and used the
spot for a storing-place for spare spars, sails, and casks; yet it is
highly improbable that the Buccaneers ever erected dwelling-houses upon
the isle. They never were here except their ships remained, and they
would most likely have slept on board. I mention this, because I cannot
avoid the thought, that it is hard to impute the construction of these
romantic seats to any other motive than one of pure peacefulness and
kindly fellowship with nature. That the Buccaneers perpetrated the
greatest outrages is very true—that some of them were mere cutthroats
is not to be denied; but we know that here and there among their host
was a Dampier, a Wafer, and a Cowley, and likewise other men, whose
worst reproach was their desperate fortunes—whom persecution, or
adversity, or secret and unavengeable wrongs, had driven from Christian
society to seek the melancholy solitude or the guilty adventures of the
sea. At any rate, long as those ruins of seats on Barrington remain,
the most singular monuments are furnished to the fact, that all of the
Buccaneers were not unmitigated monsters.
“But during my ramble on the isle I was not long in discovering other
tokens, of things quite in accordance with those wild traits,
popularly, and no doubt truly enough, imputed to the freebooters at
large. Had I picked up old sails and rusty hoops I would only have
thought of the ship’s carpenter and cooper. But I found old cutlasses
and daggers reduced to mere threads of rust, which, doubtless, had
stuck between Spanish ribs ere now. These were signs of the murderer
and robber; the reveler likewise had left his trace. Mixed with shells,
fragments of broken jars were lying here and there, high up upon the
beach. They were precisely like the jars now used upon the Spanish
coast for the wine and Pisco spirits of that country.
“With a rusty dagger-fragment in one hand, and a bit of a wine-jar in
another, I sat me down on the ruinous green sofa I have spoken of, and
bethought me long and deeply of these same Buccaneers. Could it be
possible, that they robbed and murdered one day, reveled the next, and
rested themselves by turning meditative philosophers, rural poets, and
seat-builders on the third? Not very improbable, after all. For
consider the vacillations of a man. Still, strange as it may seem, I
must also abide by the more charitable thought; namely, that among
these adventurers were some gentlemanly, companionable souls, capable
of genuine tranquillity and virtue.”
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