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915

Bucaniers of America 1771

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:1,000.00 USD Estimated At:NA
Bucaniers of America 1771
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Exciting two-volume set of ''Bucaniers of America,'' a collection of eyewitness accounts of pillaging and plundering in the 17th century Caribbean and Central America. The memoir is by Alexandre O. Exquemelin, a French writer and barber-cum-surgeon to the famed Sir Henry Morgan, whose escapades as well as those of other high-seas merchants fill the book. Exquemelin, who participated in the 1697 Raid on Cartagena, originally wrote the book in Dutch in 1678; his accounts of Morgan as a bloodthirsty pirate precipitated a libel suit by Morgan to no significant effect however, other than cementing the popularity of ''Bucaniers'' in popular culture. It's now considered by historians as an important sourcebook of high-seas privateering at a time when bucaneers could capitalize upon the tense relations of the major European powers and their pre-colonial explorations. It has also influenced writers such as John Steinbeck, Ian Fleming and Peter Benchley. An excerpt from Volume I: ''...the guide of the canoes cried out...His voice caused infinite joy to all the pirates, hoping to find some provisions to satiate their extreme hunger. Being come to the place, they found no body in it, the Spaniards being fled, and leaving nothing behind but a few leathern bags, all empty...Being angry at this, they pulled down a few huts which the Spaniards had made, and fell to eating the leathern bags...Thus they made a huge banquet upon these bags of leather, divers quarrels arising concerning the greatest shares. By the bigness of the place, they conjectured about 500 Spaniards had been there, whom, finding no victuals, they were now delirious to meet, intending to devour some of them rather than perish...Captain Morgan knowing some of his men were now almost dead with hunger...'' Exquemelin later illustrates the truth of the idiom about thieves and honor, ''...those of our men, who had lost their money by gaming, put their cruel design in execution...and...I came to know that the warning formerly given to me was too true: for these wretches...hid themselves behind the rocks that are upon the brink of this river, by which we must necessarily pass...We went down the river at a distance from one another, and without any mistrust; they had but too much time and conveniency to pick out and murder five Englishmen, whom they knew to be some of the best furnished with booty...None of our people knew any thing of this murder; but...I told them what I had seen, which was fully confirmed, as well as by the absence of the dead men, as by that of the assassins, who durst not come and rejoin us, and whom we never saw from thence forward...'' Two volume set is bound in leather with gilt lettering and ribbed spines. This copy is the fifth edition, printed ''for T. Evans in King-Street, Covent Garden, and Richardson and Urquhart, under the Royal Exchange'': London: 1771. Volume I and II runs 318 and 359 pages respectively and each measures 4'' x 7''. Both volumes show chipping to the board corners and general wear as one would expect for their age. Overall in attractive, very good condition.
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