BUCCANEERS, those who dry and smoke flesh or fish, after the manner of the Americans.
This name is particularly given to the French inhabitants of the island of St Domingo, whose whole employment is to hunt bulls, or wild boars, in order to sell the hides of the former, and the flesh of the latter.
The buccaneers are of two sorts: The buccaneers ox-hunters, or rather hunters of bulls and cows; and the buccaneers boar-hunters, who are simply called hunters; though it seems, that such a name be less proper to them than the former; since the latter smoke and dry the flesh of wild boars, which is properly called buccaneering, whereas the former prepare only the hides, which is done without buccaneering.
Buccaneering is a term taken from Buccan, the place where they smoke their flesh or fish, after the manner of the savages, on a grate or hurdle, made of Brasil wood, placed in the smoke, a considerable distance from the fire: This place is a hut, of about twenty-five or thirty feet in circumference, all surrounded and covered with palmetto leaves.