{"id":"01KG6YH8ZKXFCPFT59GVAG3XQ1","cid":"bafkreiescymeu4jkvx3kmwaepf4g7sp6bimpyex6zqy24sqbq5hwvz54ju","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":6758,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:55.413Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG6YDDF6PTWG4P7JTS5THSTD","start_line":6707,"text":"commanding the most quiet scenery—what do you think I saw? Seats which\r\nmight have served Brahmins and presidents of peace societies. Fine old\r\nruins of what had once been symmetric lounges of stone and turf, they\r\nbore every mark both of artificialness and age, and were, undoubtedly,\r\nmade by the Buccaneers. One had been a long sofa, with back and arms,\r\njust such a sofa as the poet Gray might have loved to throw himself\r\nupon, his Crebillon in hand.\r\n\r\n“Though they sometimes tarried here for months at a time, and used the\r\nspot for a storing-place for spare spars, sails, and casks; yet it is\r\nhighly improbable that the Buccaneers ever erected dwelling-houses upon\r\nthe isle. They never were here except their ships remained, and they\r\nwould most likely have slept on board. I mention this, because I cannot\r\navoid the thought, that it is hard to impute the construction of these\r\nromantic seats to any other motive than one of pure peacefulness and\r\nkindly fellowship with nature. That the Buccaneers perpetrated the\r\ngreatest outrages is very true—that some of them were mere cutthroats\r\nis not to be denied; but we know that here and there among their host\r\nwas a Dampier, a Wafer, and a Cowley, and likewise other men, whose\r\nworst reproach was their desperate fortunes—whom persecution, or\r\nadversity, or secret and unavengeable wrongs, had driven from Christian\r\nsociety to seek the melancholy solitude or the guilty adventures of the\r\nsea. At any rate, long as those ruins of seats on Barrington remain,\r\nthe most singular monuments are furnished to the fact, that all of the\r\nBuccaneers were not unmitigated monsters.\r\n\r\n“But during my ramble on the isle I was not long in discovering other\r\ntokens, of things quite in accordance with those wild traits,\r\npopularly, and no doubt truly enough, imputed to the freebooters at\r\nlarge. Had I picked up old sails and rusty hoops I would only have\r\nthought of the ship’s carpenter and cooper. But I found old cutlasses\r\nand daggers reduced to mere threads of rust, which, doubtless, had\r\nstuck between Spanish ribs ere now. These were signs of the murderer\r\nand robber; the reveler likewise had left his trace. Mixed with shells,\r\nfragments of broken jars were lying here and there, high up upon the\r\nbeach. They were precisely like the jars now used upon the Spanish\r\ncoast for the wine and Pisco spirits of that country.\r\n\r\n“With a rusty dagger-fragment in one hand, and a bit of a wine-jar in\r\nanother, I sat me down on the ruinous green sofa I have spoken of, and\r\nbethought me long and deeply of these same Buccaneers. Could it be\r\npossible, that they robbed and murdered one day, reveled the next, and\r\nrested themselves by turning meditative philosophers, rural poets, and\r\nseat-builders on the third? Not very improbable, after all. For\r\nconsider the vacillations of a man. Still, strange as it may seem, I\r\nmust also abide by the more charitable thought; namely, that among\r\nthese adventurers were some gentlemanly, companionable souls, capable\r\nof genuine tranquillity and virtue.”\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6YGBW6E282H1DWEQK3EJYM","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6YDDF6PTWG4P7JTS5THSTD","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG6YCG626JN4FCG8QK17CQCF","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6YH8ZFH0A736S08JYET6GT","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:56.083Z","ts":"2026-01-30T07:58:06.843Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}