“That famous mulatto,” said Gage, “was he who boarded our frigate with his soldiers.  I lost four thousand pesos wealth in pearls and jewelry and about three thousand in ready money.  I had still other things with me, viz., a bed, some books, pictures painted on copper, and clothes, and I asked that Mulatto captain to let me keep them.  He donated me them liberally, out of consideration for my vocation, and said I must take patience, for he was not allowed to dispose in other way of my pearls and my money; moreover, he used the proverb:  If fortune to-day is on my side, to-morrow it will be on yours, and what I have won to-day, that I may lose to-morrow....  He also ordered to give me back some single and double pistoles, out of generosity and respect to my garb....”

“After having searched their prize,” continued the traveler, “Captain and soldiers thought of refreshing themselves on the provisions we had on board; the generous captain had a luxurious dinner and invited me to be his guest, and knowing that I was going to Habana, he drank the health of his mother and asked me to go to see her and give her his kindest regards, saying that for her sake he had treated me as kindly as was in his power.  He told us, moreover, when still at table, that for my sake he would give us back our ship, so that we could get back to land, and that I might find some other and safer way to continue my voyage to Spain....  Everything taken away from the ship save my belongings, which captain Diaguillo ordered to let me out of a generosity not often to be found with a corsair, he bade us fare-well thanking us for the good luck we had procured him.”

Thomas Gage reached Habana in safety and called upon the mother of the Corsair, but does not say how he found her.

J. KUNST

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Gage published in 1648 in London an account of his residence and voyages; I have only a French version of his work at hand, printed in Amsterdam, in 1721.  The passages cited are re-translated from that language and, therefore, will not agree word for word with the original text.

[2] Gage’s “Voyages,” Part 3, Chapter II.

[3] It seems proper to add here, that three years after Guatemala had declared her independence of Spain, she abrogated slavery by decree of April 17, 1824.  Thereby she got, by the way, into difficulties with Great Britain, which as late as in 1840 demanded the extradition of slaves run away from the adjacent British territory of Balize.  Guatemala was by men-of-war sent to her coast forced to do so, though that was contrary to her constitution.

[4] Within the last decades, some Negroes have been brought over, from the United States, to the banana plantations of United Fruit Co., near the Atlantic coast, and occasionally, though very seldom, one meets with a black newcomer from Jamaica, Barbadoes, or other West Indian islands.