Differences seldom arose among them, and when they did occur, they were usually adjusted without much difficulty. 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. These fixtures, thus adjusted, were called _buccans_, and the process of curing the meat _buccaning_. The hunters, having adopted this process from the savages, were like them called _buccaneers_. In process of time the name was applied to the sea robbers as well as to the hunters; and when piracy became the general profession as a substitute for planting and the chase, all were called buccaneers indiscriminately.
Previously to the great and sudden augmentation of their forces, by the immigration from St. Christopher's about the year 1660, the buccaneers had taken possession of Tortuga, the geographical position and character of which island was well suited to their commercial and piratical purposes. This little island had been occupied by a few Spaniards as early as 1591; but their numbers were so small as not to interfere with the object of the buccaneers, while its rocky conformation afforded peculiar facilities for defence in the event of attack.