Publisher's Synopsis
There can scarcely anything be found in the literature of our language, more wild and wonderful, than the narrative contained in this volume. The extraordinary career of Captain Kidd, a New-York merchant, the demoniac feats of those fiends in human form, Bonnet, Barthelemy, and Lolonois; the romantic history of the innocent female pirate Mary Read, and of the termagant Anne Bonney; the amazing career of Sir Henry Morgan, and the fanaticism of Montbar, scarcely surpassed by that of Mohammed or Loyola, combine in creating a story, which the imagination of Dickens or Dumas could scarcely rival. And yet these incidents seem to be well authenticated. The writer has drawn his facts from Esquemeling's Zee Roovers, Amsterdam, 4to, 1684; Oexemelin's Histoire des Aventuriers, 12mo, Paris, 1688; Johnson's History of the Pirates, 2 vols., London, 1724; Thornbury's Monarchs of the Main, 3 vols., London, 1855; History of the Buccaneers of America, 1 vol. 8vo, Boston, 1855; with many other pamphlets, encyclopaedias, and secondary works. In exploring this hitherto almost unknown field of research, the writer has been as much surprised at the awful scenes which have opened before him, as any of his readers can be. There are but few thinking men who will peruse this narrative, to whom the suggestion will not arise, "What a different world would this have been, and would it now be, were all its inhabitants conscientiously, prayerfully, with brotherly love striving to do right." And this is the religion of Jesus. He has taught us to pray "Thy kingdom come on earth as in heaven."
