Beautiful day, so we went for a walk in the Jean Lafitte national park today and ran across this little cutie by the trail. Even in the daytime, I shudder when I look into some of that murky water. I can only imagine what it must have been like in the pitch dark as pirates and Baratarians smuggled their slaves and Spanish gold through here. “Please keep your hands in the boat at all times .. . ”
Coincidentally (or not) I’m reading this at the moment, which is beautfully done, especially considering how rare and spotty a lot of the archival materials are for this kind of research. Lafitte intentionally kept himself a mystery, so much so that there is not even an agreement on how to spell his name. Lafitte. Laffite. Lafit. Lafita. He might have been born in France, or possibly Saint-Domingue. One thing we know for sure: he had cajones.
