In obstinate and aggravated
cases, however, their disputes were decided by firearms, in the use of
which the nicest principles of fairness and honor were observed. A ball
entering the back or the side of a party, afforded evidence that he had
fallen by treachery, and the assassin was immediately put to death. The
former laws of their own country were disregarded; and by the usual sea
baptism received in passing the tropic, they considered themselves
expatriated from their native land, and at liberty to change their
family names, which many of them did--borrowing terms from the character
of the profession which they had chosen, as suited their fancy. Their
dress was a shirt and drawers dipped in the blood of the animals they
killed, shoes without stockings, a leathern girdle by which their knife
and a short sabre were suspended, and a hat or cap without a brim. Their
common food was the choicest pieces of bullock's flesh, seasoned with
orange juice and pimento, and cured by smoke; of bread they lost the
use, and, until the trade of piracy was adopted, water was their only
drink. The term _buccaneers_, by which the hunters were first known, was
derived from a tribe of the Caribs, 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.
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