Gold

I am reading a very interesting book from the library at the moment called A Pirate of Exquisite Mind by Diana and Michael Preston about a *pirate and naturalist called William Dampier. The contribution he made to science and natural history has been more or less forgotten, mainly because of his less savoury contributions to nicking treasure.

These leaves reminded me of gold pieces and it has been amazing to read of the deprivations people suffered just to find money and treasure. You would have thought after the first couple of near-starvations, boils, maggots and deaths they might had discovered that you can't eat gold but no!

I have barely started the book but I have already discovered that the whole pirate/parrot thing has not been made up. A group of buccaneers of whom Dampier was one, attacked a Spanish fort which they eventually took, only to discover that the occupants had left, taking with them all the treasure. However they had left behind a large number of talking parrots. The men loved them and took so many parrots on their two boats that they barely left space to manoeuvre on board! Lucky Dampier kept an excellent journal.

* I have already forgotten the exact definitions but strictly, Dampier was a buccaneer which is somewhere between a privateer and a pirate.