66 encouraged than assisted in putting down the pirates and corsairs of the states of Barbary. Would it not have been more for the interests of humanity, and the blessings of commerce, if, instead of what was called singeing the King of Spain's beard," sending expeditions to gather plunder rather than to wage war, dispatching Drake and Raleigh to Panama and Orinoco, they had first agreed even with Spain to rid the European seas of these miscreants, whose spirit still survived, after our bombardment of Algiers, to animate the Riff Pirates in the middle of this nineteenth century? Our traders to the Levant were often carried captive to the ports of Fez and Tunis even in the age of Monson and Blake; and our incomparable Barrow, in his passage from Leghorn to Constantinople in 1657, had a narrow escape from being made an Algerine rover's prize. But at this period it seems that buccaneers of all nations found harbour at Sallee or other Moorish ports, and sold their plunder to the Moorish Beys.* Two bold fellows are specially mentioned by Cabrera; one familiarly called by the Spaniards Pie de Palo, or Timberlegs, an English cruiser, who, after the conclusion of King James's peace, kept up a little private war of his own, and did not surrender to the Count of Elda till he had killed thirty of his men, and wounded the Count himself;+ * Cabrera, 560. + Id. 280. Another English renegade and pirate, Ali George, occurs in 1617. Notes to Cabr. 597. the other, Simon Dance, who seems to have been a Dutchman, and perhaps survived, after he had finished his bloody trade, to cultivate tulips, like an honest burgomaster at home-for his pursuers could not take him. (40.) They were indeed not only Turks and Moors, but the lawless outcasts from all Christian lands, who addicted themselves to these unhallowed ventures. Uluch Ali, or Ochali, mentioned by Gongora in his Song of Lepanto, was a Calabrian who had turned Turk. His skilful seamanship saved him at Lepanto; but subsequently, in danger of falling into the hands of John of Austria, he took poison and destroyed himself.* Hassan Aga, Dey of Algiers at the time of the detention of Cervantes, was a Greek renegade.t Saber Pasha, another Dey near the same time, was a Hungarian. Morat, whom Gongora calls a Calabrian, is said by other authorities to have been an Albanian or Arnaut. He was a contemporary of Simon Dance; and, as Simon made a prize of the Dean of Jaen, whom he sold at Algiers,§ Morat made a bold effort to carry off the Bishop of Malaga from the trim gardens near the city, wherein he used to take his pleasure: but he missed his mark, the prelate having received timely warning.|| These freebooters probably knew that the wealth of the Church of Spain * Pellicer, Notes to Don Quixote, iii. 91. + Id. vol. i. lxviii. the pirates We not and the * wir was called sing expedi 2. disand Orinoco, Stand the vase spit still I mate PLR cen ver be carried en in the age combie Barrow, * Casinople in raz being made an Saas gerod it seems rund barbeer at Sallee sther plunder to the f his own, and ₫ the Con the other, Simon Dance, who seems to have bea his Bloody trade, to cut van ty take $4 would flow into their ports to rescue such holy persons. With the same view it was a frequent practice of the pirates to carry off reliques, images of the saints, and such sacred furniture as they found in churches near the coast, things of no marketable value, but which the piety of the Friars of the Order of Redemptionists, when they came on their charitable missions, would often rescue even at a higher price than the captors asked for them. Those who were most exposed to the peril were the herring-fishers of the Andalusian coast nearest to Africa, described by Cervantes as the cream of all the merry rogues and slang characters of Spain. "But their sweets of life," he says, "have a bitter sauce; they cannot sleep securely without the fear that they may be in an instant carried off from Zahara to Barbary." In order to guard themselves from surprise, they had towers built at different distances along the coast, to which they used to retire at night, and appointed scouts and sentinels to watch and give the alarm if any enemy approached: "but it sometimes happened that scouts and sentinels, the poor rogues and their employers, boats and nets and net-makers, went to sleep in Spain, and found themselves the next morning in Tetuan.”* (41.) The towers of which Cervantes speaks, were in progress during the later years of his life, and were not completed till the year of his death, in 1616. It was a design entertained in the time of Charles V. Cervantes, Novela de Ilustre Fregoną. * |