Identifier: historicalsketch00hear (find matches)
Title: Historical sketch book and guide to New Orleans and environs, with map : illustrated with many original engravings, and containing exhaustive accounts of the traditions, historical legends, and remarkable localities of the Creole city
Year: 1885 (1880s)
Authors: Hearn, Lafcadio, 1850-1904 Pennell, Joseph, 1857-1926
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : W.H. Coleman
Contributing Library: University of Connecticut Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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clared its independence of Spain,and invited to its port of Carthagena all the privateers and buccaneers of the gulf. Commis-sions were promptly given or sold to them to sail under the Columbian flag and prey upon thecommerce of poor old Spain. The privateers selected as their headquarters the little bay orcove of Grand Terre. It was called Barataria. and several huts and storehouses were builtthere, and cannon planted on the beach. Here rallied the privateers of the Gulf with their fast-sailing schooners armed to the teeth and manned by fierce-looking men, armed with cutlasses-desperadoes of all nations. Besides its inaccessibility to ressels of war, the Bay of Barataria recommended itself byanother important consideration. It was near to New Orleans, where the spoils of the privateers,or as they can well be styled, pirates, could be disposed of. A regular organization was estab-blished, officers chosen and agents appointed in New Orleans to enlist men and negotiate thesale of goods-
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^ GUIDE TO NEW ORLEANS. 189 Among these agents was the blacksmith Jean Lafitte, who by his address, enterprise andguccess soon obtained such ascendancy over the lawless congregation at Barataria that theyelected him their captain or commander. There is a tradition that tnis choice gave great dissatisfaction to some of the more warlikeof the pirates, and particularly to one Gambio, a savage, grim Italian wlio did not scruple toprefer the title and character of pirate to the puling hypocritical one of privateer; and Lafittefound it necessary when one of Gambios followers resisted him to shoot him through the heartbefore the whole band. His vigor and determination gave him supreme command of the piratesand he certainly conducted his administration with energy and ability. A large fleet of smallvessels rode in the harbor, besides others that were cruising in the Gulf. Their store-houses werefilled with valuable goods. Hither resorted merchants and traders from all parts of the countryto p

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