CAPTAIN COXON
Eight generations ago, the island of Carmen, in the Lagoon of Tides, in the Bay of Campeachy, was one of the loneliest places in the world. It was a wilderness, half swamp half jungle, where the red mangrove trees, and the stunted whitethorn, shut away a few Indians from the roaring of the Lagoon tides at flood and ebb.
To the north of it there lay the Bay, to the south the Lagoon; to the west and east a number of sandy islands about which the tides raced. On some of the islands, and on all the marshy mainland, there grew the valuable logwood-trees, which made the neighbouring waters to smell sweetly when their profuse yellow blossoms were in season. To these islands, at certain times of the year, there came a Spaniard from Campeachy, with a gang of cowboys, to hunt the wild cattle for their hides and tallow. This Spaniard, whose name was Juan
