Considering the size of Jamaica, it seems strange to say that in the fastnesses of its mountains there lived a body of men, just a handful of them, who actually defied the British Government and all the arms they could bring against them, not for a year or twenty years, but for close on one hundred and forty years!

It seems incredible; but when I went to live at the Hyde I began to believe it, once I had gone up to Maroon town I quite understood it, and before I had left Jamaica, having spent three months at Kempshot, I saw what an ideal country was this for guerilla warfare such as the Maroons waged. The story of these black men is one that deserves to be remembered and set down beside the tale of the Doones in Devonshire, or the Highland Chiefs who held the glens of Scotland for the Stuart king.

The origin of the term “Maroon” is somewhat obscure. There are people who say it is derived from a Spanish word meaning wild, and there are others who declare that Maroons simply meant hog-hunters, for upon these animals the free-booters lived.

Bryan Edwards says the Spaniards left 1500 slaves behind them. Bridges is sure that every Spanish slave was killed or taken within eight years of the conquest of the island. But this parson of the Church of England is a gentleman whom the more we read him the less we like him. He was a time-server and a sycophant on his own showing. His evident intention was to please the planters, and though that in itself is not a crime, it is certainly a sin, when a man undertakes to write a history, to look only for the good on one side, and to be very sure of the evil on the other. In the days of Bridges (he wrote in 1828), the island was divided into planters and slaves, and the man who drank the planters' punch, who was entertained in their houses, who laid himself out to be so invited—“sucked up” as Australian school-boys used to say—was hardly likely to consider the slaves anything but the dregs of humanity. It flattered the vanity of the planters to think that within eight years of the driving out of the Spaniards their slaves were subdued as well. It is hardly likely they were. It seems to me that that little band of men, hidden away among the cockpit country of St James and Trelawny, and in the mountains of Portland and St Thomas, probably began with the slaves left behind by the Spaniards, and were recruited by all the more adventurous spirits who managed to escape from their loathed bondage. For I do not believe that the black people, as some people say, were happier as slaves. Rather do I agree with Burke who, in the great debates on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, said: “That nothing made a happy slave but a degraded man.”

The cockpit country of Jamaica is an amazing country still. I paid it a visit by the courtesy of Mr Moralez, the father of the lovely girl who owned the little canoe, and she came with me to show me points of interest, for she had lived in Montego Bay all her life.

It was a glorious morning in December, and December mornings in Jamaica are more likely to be delicious than a May morning in England or Australia. There is something in the soft, cool air that no mere pen can describe. Everywhere is green, dark green of pimento, light green of akee or dogwood, vivid green of cane. Crushing in the sugar mills has begun, and all is activity as you pass the works on the estates. On the roads, marching along with loads on their heads, mostly of green banana for it happened to be a Monday, were throngs of people, mostly women. They tramp miles—old women, young women, boys, and little girls who step out on sturdy little black legs and swing their short and scanty frocks, and are smiling under a load that surprises me, for they are proud that they, too, may join the throng of wage-earners, small wage-earners when we compare results with other labourers in the outside world, but still, slaves no longer, and earning money that is their very own.

The road winds with hairpin curves up the steep hills. Sheer up on one side, very often built up with stone on the other—there is rock in plenty—and sheer down into the valley below. Soon we were on mountain land, untouched by the hand of man, and crawling up one side of a mountain we could look over to the breakneck mountain side across the cockpit that lay between, for the cockpits mentioned so often in the history of Jamaica are what we should call gullies in Australia, and glens in Scotland. Precipitous holes are they, and far below us and far above us we could see tree-ferns such as I have not seen since I left Australia, and all the steep mountain sides are bound together with undergrowth and creeper, growing so densely that I can quite well believe a man who said you could progress only at the rate of a quarter of a mile a day when you had to cut your way through. There are trees, of course, wonderful trees, festooned with vines, but we could only see them from a distance, the trees on the other side of the mountain; close at hand we saw only the tangle of greenery growing round the trunks. And the trees grow tall and straight in their struggle towards the light and sunshine. There is mahogany, the lovely wood we all know—I pride myself on my mahogany wardrobes; there is mahoe, nearly as fine; there is bullet wood, hard as its name implies and too good for the sleepers into which it is made, and wherever there is space enough for it, it looks splendid standing out against the blue on some mountain spur, there is the symmetrical broad leaf which is akin to what they call the almond, though it is certainly not the almond of Italy. And again, close at hand, there is maiden-hair and coral, and other ferns like a conservatory grown wild, growing beside little springs of crystal clear water that spurt out among the rocks; and there are creamy ginger lilies turning their delicate faces to the light, and other lilies, gorgeous as a tulip, red splashed with orange, true daughters of the sun. And always is the feathery bamboo wildly luxuriant, growing as if this were its original habitat, which it is not, and the innumerable creepers which bind all these things growing riotously with the richness of life that prevails in the tropics. Oh, a splendid land! But I do not wonder that here for over a hundred years the Maroons were masters, and raided down into the pens and estates that encroached on their grounds with impunity. They say that the Maroons were not friendly with the slaves. But that was not always true. Maroons and slaves were the same colour, and that is a great bond—how great a bond we only realise when we have left a land where everyone is white, and at length see in any one of our own colour at least a potential friend. So I think it must have been with the Maroons till the white men made of them slave-catchers, and even then the unalterable tie must have sometimes held good.

I have lived in Trelawny and in Montego Bay, places close to the Maroon Country, though twenty miles in Jamaica up steep acclivities, down abrupt slopes, across mountain passes, is twenty times as far as it would be in another land. But the Hyde was close to the cockpit country. We went just a little way behind into the hills and we soon came to a place where no wheeled vehicle could pass, where we must of necessity walk along the bridle track cut in the side of the steep mountains that rose up on either hand, though perhaps a very surefooted horse or mule might have carried us in safety. And all the houses round about those hills had loopholes in their walls.

“For the Maroons.”

The people have forgotten long ago the old-time fear; only when you see a curious loophole in the lower masonry of a house, a house on the hillside to which you mount by many winding stone steps—a fine staircase in any land—and you ask what is that for, the dwellers say, “The Maroons.” But sometimes it was for general defence, defence against the picaroons that infested the seas, against the slaves who might rise at any time. But round about Montego Bay and in the hills in Trelawny close against the cockpit country those slots in the masonry were certainly against the Maroons.

Dallas says that many of the slaves who rose at Suttons in Clarendon made their way to the Maroons in the heart of the island, and after that their numbers were occasionally recruited from among the plantation negroes. They got provisions from the provision grounds, and the settlers who lived a little back from the towns in places like Balaclava (which was not Balaclava then), Ulster Springs, on the mountain sides as at the Hyde, Catadupa, and quaintly named Lapland, were kept in a perpetual state of alarm.

There was a time when I thought to be kept in a perpetual state of alarm would make life impossible, and I wondered at pioneers who first crossed Kentucky—“that dark and bloody ground,”—at the estate owners and pen-keepers who dwelt among their discontented slaves in places where the Maroons might easily raid; indeed I wonder still. But now, in a measure I understand. During the war I lived not far from Woolwich arsenal, that magnet for German airships. Were people there afraid?

Some of us were, I suppose, but the vast majority grew accustomed to the alarms. So few people were killed even if they came every night, so few houses were wrecked though the night sky was illuminated with search-lights that we became inured to them. And so I suppose it was with these people who lived on the borders of the Maroon Country. The pens and estates close to the mountains were their homes. Here they must live, and they hoped that the raiding Maroons would not come their way, that their slaves would stand by them, and that they would be able to beat them off if they did; that anyhow, if the worst came to the worst, help would come to extricate them before the savages were able to work their wicked will upon them.

Still, of course, the Maroons must have retarded the settlement of the country as Dallas says they undoubtedly did.

“By degrees they became very formidable, and in their predatory excursions greatly distressed the back settlers by plundering their houses, destroying their cattle, and carrying off their slaves by force.”

“At first,” says Dallas, “they contented themselves with isolated cases of depredation, but growing bolder, became such a danger that the colonists resolved to reduce them.”

“Isolated cases of depredation” are very hard on those isolated cases. But when raids like this have been repeated twice or thrice, then even the colonist who did not come into contact with the Maroons realised that something must be done. The Maroons concentrated themselves under Cudjoe, whom we read was “a bold, skilful, and enterprising man,” who, on assuming the command, appointed his brothers Accompong and Johnny leaders under him, and Cuffee and Quao subordinate captains. Many of these negroes seem to have been Koromantyns, runaway slaves, whom Dallas describes as “a people inured to war on the coast of Africa.” Ashantis all I doubt not.

Cudjoe had a great reputation. From the Maroons in the Eastern Mountains a body calling themselves Cottawoods broke away, and with their women and children joined Cudjoe by the rugged, inaccessible mountain paths and valleys, and Dallas tells of another body of black men who also cast in their lot with him.

“These,” says he, “were distinct in every respect, their figure, character, language, and country being different from those of the other blacks. Their skin is of a deeper jet than that of any other negro, their features resemble those of Europeans, their hair is of a long and soft texture like a Mulatto's or Quadroon's; their form is more delicate, and their stature rather lower than those of the people they joined; they were much handsomer to a European eye, but seemed not to have originally possessed such hardiness and strength of nerve as the other people under Cudjoe; and although it is probable that the intercourse with the latter had existed between seventy and eighty years, and an intermixture of families had taken place, their original character was easily traced in their descendants. They were called Madagascars, but why I do not know, never having heard that any slaves were brought from the island of Madagascar. They said that they ran away from the settlements about Lacovia in the parish of St Elizabeth soon after the planters had bought them. It does not appear that their numbers were great, but they were remarkably prolific.”

Bridges says in much more grandiloquent language that a slave ship from Madagascar with slaves that had Malay blood in their veins was wrecked on the coast, and the slaves escaping joined the Maroons. But one thing is clear, that the blood of a good many races ran in the veins of these freebooters who held the heights for so long. It is quite possible there was even a little admixture of white blood, but not very much, for one thing was certain, they hated the whites—naturally.

At first it seems Cudjoe was only regarded as a leader of runaway slaves; later, as his successes grew and settlement among the mountains became more and more difficult on account of his depredations, they decided he was a Maroon. Hidden in the inaccessible fastnesses of the interior, the troops sent against him were foiled again and again. It was rough on those soldiers dressed in the absurd fashions of the time so unsuitable for the tropics, but once they got beyond the parade ground, I doubt not they accommodated themselves to circumstances lightly clad in shirt and breeches. There is in the Jamaican Institute a fearsome erection of black felt and brass which says it is the headgear of a militia regiment in the eighteenth century, and is kept there as a monument to the unutterable folly of those who arranged for their fighting forces in the tropics. If everything else was ordered on like lines, it is not surprising that a foe who could take advantage of every stick and stone and tree, could and did easily make all the discipline a thing of naught.

At first the Maroons had only desired to plunder, but since indiscriminate plunder could not be allowed in a community that was striving to be civilised, and they found themselves driven farther and farther into the woods and mountains by assailants who were probably not very tender towards those who fell into their hands, they began reprisals.

“Murder,” says Dallas, “attended all their successes; not only men but women and children were sacrificed to their fury, and even people of their own colour if unconnected with them. Over such as secretly favoured them, while they apparently remained at peace on the plantations they exercised a dominion... and made them subservient to their designs. By these Cudjoe was always apprised in time of the parties that were fitted out.”

I can imagine the planters talking at their tables, the house servants waiting with unmoved or even sympathetic faces, and yet carrying the news to the field labourers. That would be enough. At night one of them would steal off to the mountains that are so near to every estate in Jamaica. They might not even wait for the night. A strange black man would not be noticeable and he might lie hidden in any hut. Knowing the numbers that were coming against them, something of their plans, and best of all knowing the country so thoroughly, it was an easy matter for Cudjoe and his lieutenants, escaped slaves, or descendants of slaves as they were, to circumvent the plans laid against them. Again and again the white assailants were caught in ambush, were slain, and—worse still for those who came after them—Cudjoe supplied his men with arms and ammunition from what they left behind them. It was, as a matter of fact, fairly easy for the Maroons to get arms and ammunition. The times were such that of necessity every man went armed and must be able to get ammunition easily.

“There was no restriction,” says Dallas, “in the sale of powder and firearms, and there can be no doubt that Cudjoe had friends who made a regular purchase of them under pretence of being hunters and fowlers for their masters.... Nay, a Maroon himself might, carrying a few fowls, and a basket of provisions on his head, pass unnoticed and unknown through the immense crowd of negroes frequenting the markets in the large towns.”

And these wild men, too, had learned, taught in a hard school, to be careful. They never threw a shot away as the white men did. Every bullet with them was bound to find its billet. The marksmanship of the Maroons became proverbial. Oh, we can see easily enough how it was that Cudjoe managed to protract the war for years.

Things were getting desperate, something must be done. They had not nearly enough soldiers.... But in a country like Jamaica, where slave risings were to be feared, whose coasts were harried by picaroons and corsairs, which might even expect descents by the French and Spaniards, there were the militia, and they raised easily enough independent companies and rangers to cope with the difficulties that faced the country. They even raised a body of negroes called Blackshot, favoured, of course, above the rest of their race, a body of Mulattoes who might perhaps reasonably be supposed to side with the whites, and also they brought over from Central America a body of Mosquito Indians. Both the Blackshot and the Mosquito Indians, wild or half wild men themselves, proved of great assistance. They found out the provisions grounds of Cudjoe and the Maroons, and many were the skirmishes as they drove the freebooters back, back into the recesses of the mountains I went up that sunny December morning; but it is on record that even when the Maroons were defeated it was always the assailants who lost the more heavily. But indeed, seeing the country now that is partly opened up, so that you may stand on a well-made road and look down into the most desperate cockpit, I know that it must have taken an amazing valour to have penetrated at all in the old days.

“There are,” says Dallas, “parallel lines of cockpits, but as their sides are often perpendicular from fifty to eighty feet” (looking down with the jungle clear from the top I should have said they were deeper), “a passage from one line to the other is scarcely found practicable to any but a Maroon.... There are trees in the glens and the entrance of the defiles is woody. In some water is found.” They were almost impregnable those fastnesses. But out of these defiles the Maroons had to come in search of provisions and the sharp-sighted guides, Mosquito Indians and other black men on the white men's side, easily detected the paths all converging on the same place. It might be a defile so narrow that for half a mile men could only pass through in single file. The Maroons knew as well as their assailants that these paths that led into their impregnable defiles were tell-tale, and they made use of them. Always they were informed of the approach of a body of militia and soldiers. It was a fact hardly to be concealed, and in the dense vegetation surrounding the entrance to the particular cockpit to be attacked they established a line of marksmen, two sometimes if the width of the ground admitted of it. They were well hidden by the roots of trees, by the thick screen of greenery, by the rocks and stones. As soon as the assailants, panting, breathless, fatigued from the terrible climb that lay behind them, approached from their concealment they let fly a volley, and if the forces, who did not lack courage, turned to fire at the spot where they saw the smoke they received a volley in another direction; prepared to charge that, they received a volley from the mouth of the glen, and then the enemy having done all the damage they could retired unhurt and triumphant in proportion as their assailants were bitter and downhearted, for always they left some of their number dead on the field and carried away wounded.

But the harrying nevertheless worried the Maroons. They had to find some place where they could grow their provisions and keep their women and children in safety, for it was not always possible to raid the plantations exactly when they wanted once the white men were on guard. Deeper and deeper into the mountains they retreated, but Cudjoe was a man of judgment. Taking up his position in the cockpits on the borders of St James and Trelawny, among some of the steepest, mountainous country in Jamaica, he commanded the parishes of St James, Hanover, Westmoreland, and St Elizabeth. He could thus obtain abundant supplies, and with his brother Accompong in the mountains overlooking the Black River, where even though there were more defenders for the plantations there were still more abundant supplies to be had, he made his people very excellent headquarters. At the bottom of the Petty River cockpit they had a supply of water and ground whereon they could grow yams and cassava and corn, so that they always had something to fall back upon and they therefore could choose their own time for coming out. So great a general was this poor runaway negro that in eight or ten years he had united all the stray bands of wandering slaves and terrorised the country-side.

“In their inroads,” says Dallas, “they exercised the most horrid barbarities. The weak and defenceless whenever surprised by them fell victims to their thirst for blood; and though some were more humane than others, all paid implicit obedience to the command of a leader when that was given to imbrue their hands in blood; murder once commenced no chief ever had power to stay the hand of his meanest follower, and there is hardly an instance of a prisoner being saved by them.” The Maroons have been accused of torturing their prisoners, but Dallas is sure they were so keen on killing that when they did take an unfortunate they were only too eager to cut off his head with their cutlasses or machetes, and doubtless many a wounded man was so despatched. We can hardly blame them for showing no mercy. They were only untaught savages and assuredly no mercy was ever shown them.

By 1739 the position of affairs was intolerable, and Governor Trelawny was determined to rid the colony of the ever-present menace. A considerable number of the soldiers and militia were collected and sent up these heights to surround all the paths to the Maroon settlements. And then, seeing there was little prospect of frightening the Maroons into submission, it was decided to make peace and to range the enemy on the side of the whites. For it must be remembered there were three parties in Jamaica, all antagonistic, whites, slaves, and Maroons. This idea was hailed with enthusiasm, as it seemed that the holding of the Maroons within bounds was likely to be no easier as the years went on, and their conquest was wellnigh impossible. In fact, they were better as friends than as enemies. Whatever they had done was best forgotten, and the Government declared themselves ready to cry quits.

The difficulty was to get within touch, and to make these people who had been hunted and harried all their lives believe this extraordinary thing. They could hardly be expected to realise the position, and it was just as well they should not. For in the face of a slave population that were as tinder beside the flame, failure would be fatal. The prestige of the white man would be gone.

And for this same reason, whatever was done must be done quickly. Colonels Guthrie and Sadler in command were instructed to move with what despatch they might. But, though the Maroons were as weary of the war as their opponents, it was difficult to get speech with Cudjoe and to make him believe that peace was in the air when they did get speech with him. For he was a cautious man, this negro leader.

When he saw the force brought against him he collected his men in a spot most suitable for his mode of warfare, placing them upon ledges of rock that rose almost perpendicularly to a great height surrounding a plain which narrowed into a passage upon which the whole force could bring their arms to bear. This passage contracted into a defile half a mile long, and it would have been the simplest thing for the Maroons to cut off a party entering it, for it was so narrow that party must march in single file. For long afterwards it was known as Guthrie's defile. In the dell behind, secured by other cockpits behind it again, were collected the Maroon women and children, and on the open ground before the defile the men had erected their huts, which were called Maroon Town, or Cudjoe's Town, and in a moment they could have flown to the rock ledges. And even if the town had been burnt it would not have been a very grave loss, just a town of wattle and posts, such as they build even now on the Gambia, with a grass or palm leaf thatch. And all around were stationed men in the hills with horns made generally of conch shells, and in those days a negro could say a good deal with a horn, even as in Africa now he can send a message hundreds of miles by tapping a tom-tom.

So Colonel Guthrie advanced towards this redoubtable hill stronghold, seeing nothing but dense greenery and outcrops of rock, and hearing all round him the sound of negro horns, now soft and low, welcoming, beseeching, now loud and threatening, daring him to come farther, now with a shrill wild clangour, warning those behind that the white man was come in force. But he advanced very slowly, making all the signs he could that he came in peace. On he came, on and on, and there must have been some amongst his followers who feared lest he risked too much, and some who, seeing he had got so far unmolested, would gladly have risked all and made a dash for the huts, whose grey smoke they could see streaming up in the clear morning air above the dense greenery.

But Colonel Guthrie held them all, and, stretching out his hand, he called out that he came in peace, that he had come by the Governor's orders to make them an offer of peace, and that the white people eagerly desired it. If the Maroons had only known it, it was a great confession of failure on the part of the arrogant whites. Back came the answer in negro jargon that the Maroons too desired peace, and they begged that the troops might be kept back. They had reverted to savagedom, these people; the men were warriors and hunters, having from two to six wives, who tilled the ground as well as bore the children. I can imagine what a danger they must have been, set in the midst of a slave population; for one thing, they were always ready to carry off the black women. And now Colonel Guthrie had come to put an end to it all.

He shouted that he would send someone to them to show the confidence he had in their sincerity, and to explain the terms of peace.

To this they agreed, and Dr Russell was elected for the purpose, and a brave man he must have been.

“He advanced very confidently towards their huts,” says the historian, “near which he was met by two Maroons, whom he informed of the purport of his message and asked if either of them were Cudjoe.” They were not Cudjoe, but they promised him if no one followed him he should see the negro leader. The horns had ceased. All on that mountainside were awaiting the great event. The two men called out in the Koromantyn language, and upon all the surrounding rocks and ledges and fallen trees appeared the warriors. Very like the Ashanti of to-day they probably were with fierce dark faces, their wool brushed back above the sloping forehead and gleaming white teeth, with necklaces of seeds or bones or beads about their necks and machetes, and sometimes long muskets in their hands. And the white messenger stood there and addressed them, they were supposed to understand English and probably did understand the gist of his speech. He said that Cudjoe was a brave and a good man, and he was sure he would come down and show a disposition to live in peace and friendliness with the white people.

The negro chief had driven them to woo him with soft words, and he did not understand the greatness of his victory, or perhaps he would have driven a harder bargain.

Several Maroons came forward, amongst them one whom it was easy to see was their leader. And behold the great negro chief who had kept the country at bay, for whose reduction regiments had been sent from England, was a monstrous misshaped dwarf, humpbacked, with strongly marked African features, “and a peculiar wildness in his manner.” He was clad in rags. He had on the tattered remains of an old blue coat, of which the skirts and the sleeves below the elbows were missing, round his head was a dirty white cloth, so dirty it was difficult to realise its original colour, a pair of loose drawers that did not reach the knees covered his substantial short legs, and he wore a hat that was only a crown, for the rim had long since gone. A bag of large slugs and a cow's horn full of powder was slung on his right side, and on his left, hung by a narrow leather strap under his arm, a sharp knife, or as they called it then, a “mushet” or “couteau.” A miserable savage after all was the great negro chief, and all his person was smeared with the red earth of the cockpits. Neither he nor his followers had a shirt to their names, though all had guns and cutlasses.

And the squat, dwarf-like chieftain who had held up the island was nervous. Facing the white man, who looked down upon him, he shifted uneasily as a negro would, and at last Russell offered to change hats with him—a brave man indeed, but the island was in straits! Upon this the Maroons came down armed, and Colonel Guthrie and the other white men came forward unarmed, and Colonel Guthrie held out his hand. The emotional African seized it and kissed it—he must have been a slave once, he knew so well what the white men expected—and threw himself on the ground, embracing Colonel Guthrie's knees, kissing his feet, and asking his pardon. He was humble, penitent, abject, clearly he did not understand the situation. And the rest of the Maroons, following the example of their chieftain, prostrated themselves, and the long dreaded black freebooters were won over to the side of the white people.

Then and there upon that mountain-side it was decreed that henceforward all hostilities between the Maroons and the whites should cease “for ever,” they said grandiloquently, that all the Maroons except those who had joined during the past two years should live in a state of freedom and liberty, that even the exceptions should have full pardon if they were willing to return to their former masters, and even if they did not wish to return, “they shall remain in subjection to Captain Cudjoe, and in friendship with us.”

Oh, it was a glorious victory—for the Maroons!

They were to have all the lands round Trelawny Town and the cockpits, with liberty to plant and dispose of their increase, and they might hunt wherever they thought fit, provided they did not come within three miles of “any penn, settlement, or crawle,” which seems to have been a privilege they could easily take, whether the white people liked it or not.

In their turn, they bound themselves to help put down any rebellion, or to help against any foreign invasion, a white man was to live amongst them, and they were to bring back runaway negroes. And finally, it was required of them that Captain Cudjoe and his successors were to wait on the Governor or Commander-in-Chief at least once a year.

And there was another Maroon victory, this time scored by the Windward Maroons in the east of the colony. These were under Quao, and as communication with Cudjoe's party was difficult, they knew nothing of the peace that had been made. A party of soldiers was sent out against them; these soldiers were new to the hills. For three days they wandered through the densely wooded mountain-land, and then they came upon the footsteps of men and dogs, saw the smoke of fires, and arrived at seventy houses with a fire burning in each, and jerked hog still broiling upon the coals.

It never occurred to them that such houses were of little value, easily made, for the material lay all around, and that the woods abounded in pigs. They were better used to the parade ground than to the woodland, and they saw nothing strange or sinister in the fact that those in flight had left a trail that even they could follow, and so they went on blindly, till suddenly, as they were laboriously making their way down to the sea, the Maroons fell upon their rear.

“The militia fled,” says Dallas, “and the baggage negroes to the number of seventy threw down their loads and followed. The regulars took shelter under the perpendicular projection of a mountain that overhung the stream, whence they could hear the Maroons talking, though they could see nothing of them. In this situation, almost hid from the enemy, they remained four hours up to their waists in water, exposed to the heat of a vertical sun and apprehensive of being taken alive and tortured.”

They had fired at the smoke of the Maroon guns, and by this means got rid of all their ammunition, but they were safe enough where they were so long as the enemy did not come directly in front. At last, when a shot was fired from that direction it seemed to them they must get away at all costs, and they made a dash across the river which brought the whole of the Maroon marksmen upon them. Their dead they abandoned, which was right enough, but they abandoned their wounded also. Harassed, fatigued, defeated men, they fled back to the quarters in St George's they had left with such high hopes three days before.

And those who were left behind? The Maroons probably came down and butchered them, but one man certainly told them of the peace made with Cudjoe's Maroons in the west. It seemed to them hardly likely, but they debated whether they should spare his life and send him to the Governor an emissary, to say that they too would like to come in on the same terms. Poor soldier of the eighteenth century, whose name even we do not know. Quao and his leading men were rather in favour of sending him. But the soldier's evil star was in the ascendant. There arose an Obeah woman, and she declared that the powers of darkness demanded the life of the white man who had fallen into their hands, and they struck off his head with a machete.

Again the Government decided this was an enemy who were too strong for them, and three months later Captain Adair went out with another party, not to fight but to make peace. By the purest accident they captured a horn-man, and him they told of the offer, dealing with him gently, probably greatly to his surprise. And from him they heard how the Maroons had discussed the news told by the luckless soldier. Since by a miracle it was true, he agreed gladly to lead the soldiers to their town, only impressing upon them how impossible it would be to take it by force. Captain Adair gave himself up to the guidance of the horn-man. And the story of Cudjoe and the Western Maroons was repeated, only Captain Adair had not so great a difficulty in convincing the savage warriors of his good intention. The massacred soldier had helped him greatly there.

“After some parley they agreed to exchange a captain for the purposes of settling preliminaries.”

That savage leader must have been an artist. There was a touch of true drama in the way he staged the scene. No sooner had these things been agreed upon than the Maroons, each with a stroke of his machete, cleared more than an acre of light brushwood on the side of the mountain and so exposed to the view of the soldiers the whole body of savage warriors ranged on the slope in order of battle.

Standing thus, the two parties came to an agreement, and not till that was done were the soldiers allowed to enter the town with their drums beating.

The horn-man was right. It would have been wellnigh impossible to take that town, for as they climbed up one steep hill and down another they noted the holes dug to cover the defenders, and the crossed sticks for resting the guns with which they had enfiladed every angle, that from the steepness it was necessary to make in ascending.

But the white men by favour were in the town and they left there a Lieutenant Thicknesse as a hostage, and he told afterwards that Quao's children could not refrain from striking their pointed fingers at his breast as they would have done knives, calling “Buckra! Buckra!” The women, he says, wore by way of decoration necklaces of human teeth, which they declared were white men's, and the jawbone of the unfortunate who had brought the first intelligence of Cudjoe's peace adorned one of their horns, a truly Ashanti way of making memorial of a slain ambassador.

And thus the white men came to terms with the Maroons of the east as they had done with those of the west, and the weary island breathed freely and sighing, said at least they had disposed of one danger—and so they had—for more than fifty years. That is to say, the white people of Jamaica had adapted themselves to the thorn which was for ever in their side.

The Maroons, they say, far excelled in strength and symmetry all the other negroes in Jamaica. They were blacker, taller and handsomer. Once they were at peace, the life of a Maroon was far from being unhappy, even though white men lived among them nominally to rule them. Their mountain homes were cool and healthy, fully ten or fifteen degrees of temperature below that of Montego Bay or Falmouth, and the surroundings were lovely.

From the mountain-side where we dwelt at the Hyde, we looked out over wooded hill and valley, coconut palms cut the sky-line, in the deeper hollows was the vivid green of sugar cane, and the bottoms between the hills were pasture land whereon were mules and horses and cattle, red and white. Always it was hill and dale, woodland and pasture, and flamboyant trees made splashes of gorgeous colour, there were plumps of dark green pimento trees like the myrtle groves wherein the gods of ancient Greece held high revel, there were orange trees and lemon trees with golden fruit and white blossoms that filled the air with fragrance; by moonlight it was fairyland and with the dawn all along the valleys and lowlands and in the clefts of the hills lay a fleecy, soft grey mist, the softest, tenderest mist that refreshed the land and added to its luxuriant fertility. And a little higher up, standing beneath a symmetrical broad leaf or a giant cotton tree, it was possible to see the blue Caribbean flecked with white waves or stilly reflecting the cloudless blue sky above. A lovely land the Maroons had for themselves for all time, and they loved it these long lithe warrior slaves with the quick wild and fiery eyes. But savages they were, and it was to keep some sort of check upon them that a white superintendent with helpers was set to live amongst them. Principally it seemed he was there to see that they did not maintain too friendly relations with the slaves from the plantations. He was bound to reside in the town, from which he could not be absent longer than a fortnight, and every three months he had to make a return on oath to the Governor of the number residing in his town, how many were able to bear arms, how many were fit for duty, the number of women and children, their increase and decrease.

So the white people kept in touch with their former enemies.

And the principal job of those enemies was to bring in runaways. They did that undoubtedly, and presently a law was passed allowing not only the usual reward, but a little extra if the slave was brought in alive.

They might have dances among themselves, and provided the dance was in the daytime with a small number of slaves. But the slaves were not to gather in Maroon Town and they were not to hold slaves of their own.

And lest they should be a danger to the country no party in pursuit of runaways was to consist of more than twelve men and was not to remain out more than twenty days, and before they went out they had to be provided with a written order from their superintendent. They were not to be employed by any white person without a written agreement and they were not to be whipped or otherwise ill-treated, and as they increased fast they had the right to relinquish their rights as Maroons and to live elsewhere in the island as free blacks.

Some of these laws had very little attention paid them. They kept slaves and bought them, they wandered about the island apparently wherever they chose, and many of them formed temporary connections with the women on the plantations. And so slack were they in their search for runaways that a large body of these emulated the Maroons themselves, and lived for over twenty years in the heart of the mountains between the eastern and the western Maroons.

The planters made no objections to their connections with their slaves, for the children of such connections belonged to them and were likely to have the strength and vigour of their fathers. But though the Maroons left these children in bondage as carelessly as did the whites in like case, still the connections thus formed must have broken away in a small measure the bitterness that was supposed to exist between the Maroon and the slave, and every child by his very vigour deepened the danger that for ever threatened the planters.

However, it was peace between the planters and the black freebooters, nominally at least for over fifty years. Doubtless there was much friction and discontent, but things always quieted down, till in 1795 the smouldering fire broke into flames again.

The causes of the second Maroon war as given by Dallas and others point to gross mismanagement on the part of someone, but we can hardly judge now of the provocation on either side.

Anyhow, there was trouble with the superintendent, a white man whom the Maroons liked and trusted, but who apparently was so slack he was away from his post for weeks at a time, and the Government suspended him and placed another man in his place. Then two Maroons, whom the Maroons openly said they counted of little worth, stole some hogs, and were apprehended and taken to Montego Bay and given thirty-nine lashes by—and there lay the sting for the unconquered Maroons—a common slave in the workhouse.

This was strongly resented and the Maroons threw out their new superintendent, and we can imagine the excitement and dismay in Montego Bay when the dismissed man came riding down the mountains. The inhabitants doubtless looked with relief upon the grey stone walls of the fort that overlooked the bay, and took care to have in order those stout stone houses with walls over two feet thick. I have lived in one of them. Those walls certainly would have been a protection against a savage foe.

The militia were called out and moved forward into the woods. So small is the island, so close they were, that Maroon Town can only have been about seventeen miles from Montego Bay, even taking into account all the hairpin-turns, and it was nothing like that as the crow flies.

It can hardly have been pleasant to have a band of bloodthirsty savages so close, and here the sycophant Bridges, who for some reason does not spare Lord Balcarres, the new Governor of the island, and blamed him for the second Maroon war, becomes quite poetical on the subject of the meeting of the militia with the enemy.

“The militia,” he says, “moved forward to the supposed scene of action and were met in the woods by a Maroon of exquisite symmetry and noble address, who descended the side of the mountain with the step of an antelope, and giving a wild and graceful flourish to his lance presented a letter requesting a conference with the chief magistrate of the district and with certain other individuals whom it named. The proposal was accepted and their terms heard.”

They wanted their superintendent back and they got him, and they had all the children in their town baptized as an evidence of good faith; they went further still, and when the authorities requested their leaders to come in, they came in, thirty-nine of them, came in peace, and those same authorities, who vowed all they desired was peace, promptly bound the hands of all but old Montague the chief behind them, marched them through the streets of the town with crowds of slaves jeering at them and shut them up in Montego Bay jail. To be behind any walls must have been hard; for these free mountaineers to be confined in an eighteenth century jail in summer in the tropics must have been a purgatory for which we can have no words. One of them put an end to his life by tearing out his bowels. Yet so utterly blind were the authorities that they took two of the men and sent them back to their own people “to induce them to surrender!” It doubtless came as a surprise to the whites that these two messengers instead of recommending instant surrender did exactly the opposite. At any rate, “upon the report they made of the reception and treatment of the thirty-seven, the Maroons, far from following the others” (I am quoting Dallas) “immediately set fire to both their towns.” When they surrendered in 1739, their numbers did not exceed 600, but when the second war broke out they had increased to over 1400, and when we remember that they dwelt among impregnable mountains and held the back settlers at their mercy, we can understand in a measure the divided councils that led to the war. Many men thought nothing was too bad for a Maroon, and it would be safer to extirpate them. They would have treated them as we treat dangerous vermin, killed them whenever and wherever they got the chance. We have only to read Bridges thirty years later to know how some of the colonists thought of the men with African blood in their veins.

“They had not been watched with that vigilance which African perfidy requires,” says Bridges, speaking of the slaves in one place, and what applied to the slaves applied still more to the Maroons. Everyone felt they must be coerced. They were a danger to the country, and while I sympathise with them very strongly, I think they were. Undoubtedly, apart from any particular provocation, if Jamaica were to be held as a slave country, these 1400 free black people dwelling in the heart of her mountains had to be subdued at any cost. They were talking of the Abolition of the Slave Trade in England, and doubtless the planters feared the effect of such talk both upon their slaves and the Maroons, should they come to hear of it.

“These insolent savages must be subdued,” said the colony with the Governor at their head, and accordingly, unmindful of the lessons of over fifty years ago, set out to subdue them by the old methods. But there were roads up to Maroon Town now, roads made and kept open by the Maroons themselves, roads winding and narrow, cut along the hillside among the tropical greenery; the mango and easily-grown bamboo, the beautiful ackee with its bright green leaves and brilliant red pods, orange trees, the dark green coffee with its fragrant white flower, and annotto with its clusters of ruby berries. But the soldiers noticed none of these things. They went up and up, and they must have found it very hard work in August.

Their leader, Colonel Sandford, knew little enough about bush fighting, but he was joined by Mr Robertson, the Commanding Officer at Fort Dalling and the owner of a pen in the neighbourhood, and he brought with him a Trelawny Town Maroon named Thomas, who undertook to act as guide to the white forces and faithfully carried out his pact. Colonel Sandford got so far that he saw the Maroons on the heights between their town and Schaw Castle, a pen in the mountains, and probably would have been content with his success had he not received from Lord Balcarres an order to take New Town. The way was a long defile between the mountains, and just at the hour of sunset he entered it at the head of his dragoons. The enemy let them get well into the defile, the column was half its length, and when it had gone two-thirds of the way they let off, all down the left of that column from one end to the other in the darkening light, a tremendous volley of small arms, they themselves being hidden from sight by trees and rocks. It was the old, old tactics of Cudjoe that you would have thought the island men at least might have expected. But in Cudjoe's day there had been no roads. Perhaps it was that well-made road that deceived them.

There was only one thing to be done; they must reach the open spaces round the town out of reach of these marksmen hidden behind the trees. They quickened their pace, urged on by the cries of the wounded and groans of the dying. Luckily, in the uncertain light the marksmanship had not been very good, or I do not know how anyone could have escaped. Then, just as they reached Old Town there was another shot, and Colonel Sandford fell. He was dead. And the wildest panic ensued. At least this is what Dallas says. There was but one thought uppermost in their minds—to get away. Undoubtedly they could have held the town had there been anyone whom they trusted to lead them, and undoubtedly they made no such effort. There was no one whose orders they would obey. The darkness gave them just the help they needed. In the murk and pouring rain they squelched their way down the slippery mountain paths, sure that dragoons were totally unfitted for mountain warfare, and so overjoyed at their escape from a handful of savages that they fired off their muskets, made a tremendous row, and generally misbehaved themselves. It is all very well to think scorn of them now, but the densely-wooded mountains were terrible, they had seen their leader fall and they were certainly both by training and equipment totally unfitted to cope with savages on the warpath.

That night there was a riotous scene. Lord Balcarres, we are told, having slipped on a plank made slippery by the rain had “a contusion over the eye,” if he hadn't been a lord and the Governor it would have been a black eye, and it might well have been attributed to another cause. But it did not add to his beauty, and the soldiers rushing into the camp wild with delight at having escaped, made such an uproar that only the Governor could cope with it. The night, indeed, was disgraceful to both sides, for the Maroons, instead of following up their very great success, retired to their town and recruited their spirits with such copious draughts of rum as made them “frantic and desperate.” Sixty of them by their own account lay in a state of insensibility till two o'clock the next day, when with the assistance of the women and the less intoxicated men they were removed to the cockpits of Petit River. Had the troops gone up that morning, more than a fourth of the young Maroon men must have fallen into their hands.

“It is much to be regretted,” says Dallas, who wrote within seven years of the catastrophe, and at least must have known something of the general talk, “that the panic by which the troops were hurried away to headquarters prevented their occupying the site of the Old Town after they were in possession of it, and might have maintained it without resistance. The immediate encamping there would not only have saved the lives of many who died of their wounds, or through fatigue, but would have left on the minds of the Maroons an impression that even their defiles were not to be depended on; whereas abandoning the town was giving them a triumph and confirming their reliance on their position.”

In this disastrous affair there fell Colonel Sandford of the dragoons, Colonel Gallimore of the militia, fifteen dragoons, thirteen militia, eight volunteers and not a single Maroon. No wonder they celebrated a victory. It is to the credit of the Maroons that none of the wounded were taken and put to torture, but most died where they fell or crawled into the woods and died for want of the help that was not forthcoming, although they were within so short a distance of the town on the seashore below, and close to so many pens and plantations. Colonel Gallimore's body was never found, and though the Maroons yielded up watches, knives, pencils, and other things from the dead and wounded, nothing of his was ever forthcoming. So it is thought he must have been wounded and crawling away, favoured by the coming darkness, have found some retreat where he died for want of care. Dallas says he was a brave, active man much beloved, but he was never seen again, and the dense woodlands of the cockpits have never so far as I know yielded up their secrets.

Things could not be left so. It was resolved to surround the scene of action, and they called up reinforcements, 100 men from the 62nd Regiment, a detachment of the 17th Light Dragoons and large bodies of militia. The soldiers could and did get at the provision grounds and destroy them, though all round they could hear the weird blowing of the Maroon horns, mournful, threatening, even triumphant and defiant. They were not beaten, they were not going to be beaten, said those horns. “Wait till we get you!” and then the angry soldiers fired into the gullies at random, and the mountains echoed and re-echoed to the noise of the discharge, and the Maroons were not a penny the worse, for even the destruction of their provision grounds did not worry them over much. They knew where to get fresh supplies.

And it rained and rained and rained. In these mountains where it is lush and green and the vegetation grows riotously, there is sometimes as much as 30 inches of rain in a month. All the paths were slimy and slippery, every overhanging branch held a heavy shower-bath, the men were soaked to their skins again and again, laying the foundation as everyone believed of all the deadly fevers with which the country was credited.

The only comfort they had was that things were a little disturbing to the enemy too, for hidden in the bush the attacking party found various trunks containing articles of linen and plate, the result of raids on the plantations, and many of the dragoons up here in the rain furnished themselves with chintz nightgowns. I like that last touch. Yet all the time the Maroons were so close in the jungle they could hear the orders given but did not attack, because they feared the white men were too far in to run away and were in such numbers they, the Maroons, could not escape if driven to bay.

But having conceded so much to the valour of the white men, they did pretty much as they pleased, even passing the soldiers camped at Vaughansfield at eleven o'clock one night and burning the buildings on a pen only six miles away on the road to Montego Bay. There was consternation in Montego Bay and thankfulness, that at least headquarters was between the town and the dreaded enemy. The raid quickened up the preparations, they dragged guns up the steep and slippery defiles that converged upon the Old Town, found no Maroons there, though round in the mountains the horns were calling defiance, and they recovered the bodies of Colonel Sandford and eighteen of those who had fallen with him.

Lord Balcarres grew tired of this unprofitable warfare and went back to Montego Bay, and, extraordinary as it seems now, they put a price on the heads of Palmer and Parkinson, the men who had been sent back to tell the other Maroons what had happened to the thirty-seven men who had come in, for they said these men had instigated the rebellion. But that these two always denied. They always maintained that when the Maroons heard what had happened to their messengers of peace, each man of his own accord set fire to his house, determined to die rather than come in.

And so bitter were they, not unnaturally, that a captain of Accompong Maroons, who had gone by a secret path to persuade them to surrender, was promptly shot because they feared he knew too much about the approaches to their strongholds.

The great mistake probably lay in bringing in soldiers who could know nothing of the difficulties of the country. There must have been many stalwart young men, in fact we know there were, who were expert hunters and woodsmen and fully competent to deal with such an enemy. The difficulty was the leader. Brave men were a drug in the market, a clever leader almost impossible to find. Counsels were always divided. A soldier fresh from Europe or from the parade ground clearly was not the right man, but it always ended in a soldier being chosen.

When Lord Balcarres gave up a command which did not seem likely to cover him with glory, he handed it over to Colonel Fitch, and General Reid came and occupied the quarters at Vaughansfield with detachments of militia from the St James, Hanover and Westmoreland regiments. They marched and they counter-marched, and the militia quarrelled with the regulars and they both consumed an immense amount of ammunition and food, but came no nearer to getting those Maroons. And still it rained and the militia grew sick of the fruitless job, declared they had work on their plantations that must be attended to—the companies were relieved every fortnight, and it grew more and more difficult to collect men to take their place. And Colonel Fitch with the aid of slaves set about the clearing of the country as well as he was able, but it was a job that is not finished yet, so he only got a little done, and the Maroons used to come into the hills above his quarters and call him, and at last he responded to their call and they told him they only wanted a free pardon and a promise that they should not be sent from the island. This seemed to him reasonable enough and he promised to do what he could for them, and allowed two of them to go on a safe conduct to visit their friends imprisoned at Montego Bay.

It was a wrong move. The Governor, dreading lest the Maroons should raid the little town, had had the prisoners moved to a vessel in the bay for their better security, and the men returned reporting that they were in a ship and were evidently going to be taken away. From that time no more Maroons visited Colonel Fitch; they were prepared to die for their freedom.

But in true barbaric fashion they saw to it that a goodly company should attend them across the river. Colonel Fitch, preparatory to an assault, set gangs of slaves to clear the ground with companies of militia to guard them, and the Maroons laid an ambush and killed ten of the slaves and six of the militia, so that I presume clearing away undergrowth was popular neither with soldiers nor bondsmen. This certainly set the slaves against the Maroons. The militia were already as hostile as was possible.

I cannot say too often it was an awful country. There was a certain Captain Lee who commanded an advance post set in the dense jungle and fenced by high palisades, and he complained that from the hillsides above the Maroons could shoot into it, and he asked Colonel Fitch to move it. Accordingly Colonel Fitch, bent on seeing things for himself, with Colonel Jackson and several other officers, and accompanied by two Accompong Maroons went to inspect. The Accompongs did not like the job. They declared the Maroons were too close, and pointed out where they had thrown away the heads of wild cocos and eddoes, broad-leaved plants, and the leaves were not yet withered. But the white men, with incredible folly which perhaps does them credit, were unwilling to go back before they had accomplished something, and, persuading Colonel Fitch to allow them to go ahead, Colonel Jackson and one or two others went on, still accompanied by the unwilling Accompongs, and followed slowly by the Commanding Officer till they came to a place where the road forked. They were descending now so steep a declivity that they could only go one at a time, holding on by their hands. Then history repeated itself. There was a tremendous volley of small arms, an officer named Brisset was seen staggering among the bushes, both the Accompongs fell dead, and Colonel Jackson ran back on ground lower than the path. We can see him stooping low to escape possible shots, taking all advantage he could of the cover till he came back to Colonel Fitch, seated on a fallen tree, his arm supported by a projecting stump and his head resting on his hand. Once more the Maroons had got the Commander-in-Chief. The blood was trickling from the middle of his waistcoat, and the short red and brown striped linen jacket which he wore stuck out behind “as if a rib had been broken.” Such was Colonel Jackson's description. He was mortally wounded. Jackson caught his hand.

“It is Jackson, your friend Jackson. Look at me,” and he drew out a dagger, saying that he should not fall alive into the hands of the Maroons and he would die with him rather than leave him. Remember, they all feared torture. The dying man turned his face towards his friend (he was at peace with all men now, even with the Maroons) and looked at him kindly, though he was past speech, and then Jackson heard the cocking of guns, click, click, click, one after another, horribly close, and called to the soldiers to lie down, and tried to drag his friend down beside him. But Fitch resisted, turning his head as if he too would have spoken to the men, and so, though little harm was done to the men who had obeyed the order promptly, their dying leader was shot again through the forehead and there was no need for Jackson to consider his condition any longer.

It was a great victory for the Maroons. Several of the party were killed and many more wounded, among them the Captain Lee, who had come in because his little palisaded fort was hardly tenable. Colonel Jackson collected the men from Lee's post and took them all back to Colonel Fitch's quarters, where one died the next morning and Captain Lee a day or two later. Eight altogether were killed and seven wounded, but none were more regretted than Colonel Fitch. We are told he was tall and graceful, and a charming young man.

“He threw around his hut,” says Dallas, using the language of the time, “a certain elegance that bespoke the gentleman. His private virtues endeared him to his friends to whom his death was a deep wound.”

Great was the consternation in Jamaica, for riot was let loose in the mountains. Seventy men were dead and twenty-three were wounded. Listen to the tale of rapine. Brook's House was burnt; Schaw Castle was burnt; Bandon was burnt; Shand's was burnt; Stephen and Bernard's House was burnt; Kenmure was burnt and twelve negroes carried away. Darliston trash-house was burnt; Catadupa, Lapland, and Mocha were burnt and two negroes carried away. There is a little block-house of stone on Lapland with loopholes in the walls, a most substantial place, but the roof has not been on in the memory of anyone living, and I wondered very much whether this was the Lapland that was burnt by the Maroons; and we passed by Mocha, connected by an aerial rope railway on which were slung cars that descended with bananas to the country below. All these steep hillsides are flourishing fields of bananas now. Catadupa is lovely as its name, and there are one or two cottages there in which winter visitors may stay, revelling in a climate where the days are delightful, the nights gorgeous, and the mornings and evenings divine.

Those freebooters did well. Not a man of them is known to have suffered. No wonder the colony was roused to a simmer of excitement. I wonder—as probably some of the colonists wondered—why the slaves did not rise in a body, join these men of their own colour and make a bold bid for freedom.

General Walpole was put in command, and he began entirely different tactics. He taught his men to take cover as the Maroons did, so that there are accounts of actions in which a great deal of powder was expended and no man was killed on either side, and he began to clear the country round the mountains, but as for trying to keep the Maroons penned in he knew better. “It would have been just as feasible as to pen pigeons in a meadow.” He employed working negroes under cover of strong advanced parties to clear the heights that surrounded his camp, the approaches to the Maroon defile, and an eminence near to his headquarters, which almost looked into a cockpit. And always he kept the soldiers on the move, harrying the Maroons successfully on the whole, but once a sergeant and ten men took a wrong turning, a thing easy enough to do in the mountains, and got into the Maroon defile, and presently the men who were waiting for that sergeant to bring them some more ammunition heard heavy firing, and not one man returned to tell the tale.

And the soldiers kept clearing the country, and the Maroons kept breaking out in unexpected places, and raiding “like wild creatures of the forest, they found issues at every point.”

Still General Walpole had high hopes. The dry season would come with the winter months, and where he knew there was a spring he could get at, he mounted a howitzer and threw shells into the cockpit just beyond it. And some of the springs go dry in the dry season, and it was not likely the Maroons were thrifty and conserved water. Though the rains in the mountains are plenteous in their season, I have myself seen the people come miles from that cockpit country with kerosene tins upon their heads to get water from the nearest spring which happened to be upon the Hyde.

They did object to General Walpole. “Dam dat little buckra,” said the Maroons, “he cunning more dan dem toder. Dis here da new fashion for fight. Him fire him big ball a'ter we an' wen de big ball top de dam sunting fire we agen. Come boys, make we go take farer an' see wha he do den?”

And they did go farther and were driven out again. But the soldiers had to be fed, and one day the Maroons surprised a convoy of provisions, captured the ten soldiers guarding it, and cut off their heads, and always they raided the negro provision grounds whether the slave owners liked it or not, and kept themselves well supplied. The soldiers were doing better, but the Maroons were still a thorn in their side, and the war threatened to be long and prolonged, which was bad for the prestige of the white people if nothing else. For nearly five months this body of untrained negroes had defied the military force of the island.

The Governor called a council at Falmouth, a town on the north coast, twenty miles from Montego Bay—a very despondent council—and it was actually proposed, to the wrath of General Walpole, to send into the woods some of the Maroon chiefs confined at Montego Bay, men who had been confined in irons, as ambassadors to persuade the rebels to make peace!

Falmouth is not a town that attracts me, though it has a fine situation right at the sea-shore just beyond the mouth of the Martha Brae, and it is reminiscent of the days of long ago. The houses without verandahs, without even a creeper over their bare white walls, in streets without the vestige of a tree, look hot with the tropical sun pouring down upon them, but it was an important place in those times, for it has a harbour into which quite big ships may come, and those houses to which I objected are all mahogany floored with mahogany and mahoe panelling against the walls, truly the houses of rich people. In the courthouse, where probably they held this meeting, for it is one of the largest houses in the town, the mahogany flooring is simply magnificent, and kept with a shining polish that could not well be excelled in any great house in London or New York, while from the ceiling hang most splendid chandeliers of cut glass. They hold balls in that room occasionally, and then they light those chandeliers, and all the thousand and one facets of the cut glass reflect the light back on to the dark, highly polished flooring, and the deep dark flooring reflects it back again, and the girls of Trelawny and St James have as magnificent a setting for their youth and beauty in this remote corner of the Empire as ever have girls in London Town. And here, more than a hundred years ago, the Governor of the colony and all the important men met to decide what they should do with a party of banditti who only eighteen miles away were setting the whole island at defiance.

Disaffected, unconquered, they formed a rallying point for every discontented slave in the island. There lay the danger, the danger that was with them always.

But no one had any proposition to make till a certain Mr Quarrell, who had a plantation near to Bluefields, suggested that they should bring dogs, the hunting dogs the Spaniards kept to run down their slaves, from Cuba.

Curiously enough, a people who seem to have hesitated at no barbarity where their slaves were concerned, hesitated over this matter. What would the rest of the world think of them if they hunted men with dogs? However, necessity knows no law, and finally it was agreed to send Mr Quarrell to Cuba to get the dogs, and the men who could manage them.

The tale of the bringing of those dogs reads like an epic in itself. Mr Quarrell embarked in the schooner Mercury, carrying twelve guns, and the crew of the Mercury consisted of four British seamen, one of whom was made captain, twelve Curacoa negroes, and eighteen Spanish renegadoes, and they appear to have been as nice a parcel of blackguards as a man might well gather together in those times. Throughout the voyage, the English who were on board found it necessary to keep possession of the cabin and quarter-deck, and to keep all the arms under their own charge. It was a long story of tribulation, but finally after infinite difficulties, Quarrell shipped forty chasseurs and one hundred and four dogs. They were big dogs, like powerful greyhounds, and I suspect were something like the kangaroo dogs that were so common in Australia when I was a child, greyhounds crossed with some other breed to give them bulk and strength. The chasseur was armed only with a machete, and the dogs were not supposed to tear the man they came up with, but if he made no resistance to hold him and bark for assistance. It would be no good resisting man and dog, for the steel of the machetes was excellent, and they were about eighteen inches long, formidable weapons. Dallas says these dogs and their keepers were employed in Cuba for taking runaways and breaking up bodies of negroes collected for hostile purposes, which is “sometimes occasioned,” he remarks quaintly, “by the rigour exercised on the Spanish plantations.”

The Mercury was a luckless ship. She ran ashore on a sandbank and appeared likely to leave her bones there. They had shipped cattle to feed the dogs, and on that dark night the dogs broke loose and seized the cattle, and the bellowing of the cattle, the howling of the dogs, the wild wail of the wind, the roaring of the waves as they washed over the little ship, all combined to make pandemonium, and Quarrell must have felt the Maroons' luck was holding. Even when they got her off and arrived at Montego Bay their ill-luck pursued them, for from the little fort on the hillside that was a haven of refuge to the townspeople there came a volley of grape-shot, the officer in command having mistaken the Mercury for an enemy's privateer! Luckily, they don't appear to have been good marksmen for no one was hurt, and the little ship came to anchor with some American ships between her and the guns.

Amidst immense excitement the dogs and their guardians were landed. We can imagine it. How the news flew from house to house, the Maroons were to be hunted with these immense dogs with which the Spaniards never failed to bring down their slaves. And the house slaves listened round-eyed and passed on the news to the field labourers and the streets of the town—those shamefully shadeless streets were thronged with people half-fearing, half-comforted with the reflection that soon the hills above the town would no longer be occupied by the savage Maroons. And, indeed, one hundred and four great dogs, even though muzzled and held by great rattling chains, ferociously making at every strange object and dragging the chasseurs after them, must have made a formidable array. Every door in the town was barred and the people crowded to the windows, out of reach of the dogs who were to be their salvation. And they were hurried up the mountains, paraded before the General and—never used.

But it was time they came. The dry weather was now come, the canes were very inflammable, it was difficult to defend some of the estates, especially those in the beautiful and fertile Nassau Valley, down which wanders the Black River, and it was reported that a large body of slaves were preparing to join the victorious Maroons. And then up that mountain path, the very same I dare say by which I went that December day, came the chasseurs with the dogs tugging at their waists, and the General held a review, a review at which the dogs grew so excited at the discharge of the guns that they flew at the stocks of the fusils which had been given to the chasseurs and tore them to pieces. The General himself had to flee before their onrush to his chaise, and it was only with difficulty they were restrained from tearing to pieces his horses. After which we are a little surprised to hear he expressed himself exceedingly pleased with the review. Perhaps it marks the desperateness of the situation.

And what the white men knew in the morning before nightfall had been carried into the mountains and the Maroons probably discussed this new evil that had befallen them. There could be but one end if the white men came against them with dogs—but one end. And doubtless General Walpole and his officers judged from the effect it had on the negroes the consternation that was inspired in the mountains, and they agreed that now the simplest thing would be to make peace as Colonel Guthrie had done fifty-six years before. In the end the whites must win, but the blacks might set the country in a blaze and do many thousands of pounds worth of damage before they were all taken. Therefore they would compromise.

On the 14th December the dogs were landed at Montego Bay, and on the 18th Colonel Hull fell in with a party of Maroons under Johnson, and Johnson was their best leader. It was difficult to get into conversation with them, but the troops ceased firing and then the Maroon officers, who had some inkling of the offer that was to be made, were seen skipping about from rock to rock and Mr Werge of the 17th Light Dragoons, who seems to have been a very capable young man, with a cool, deliberate courage flung down his arms and stepping down the hill till he was close under them, called out that it was peace and they had better come down and shake hands upon it. Then Fowler the Maroon advanced and took him by the hand, and at Mr Werge's suggestion—he was as brave a young man as Dr Russell—they exchanged hats and jackets.

Relations once established, General Walpole came up and the Maroons agreed that, on their knees they would beg His Majesty's pardon, that they would go to the Old Town or Montego Bay or anywhere else the Governor might appoint, and would settle on whatever lands might be given them. They would give up all runaways. And General Walpole agreed to a secret clause that they should not be sent off the island.

And, indeed, the Maroons were in a bad way. They were short of provisions and measles had broken out among them, and their women and children were almost famished.

The 1st of January 1796 was fixed for the day they should come in. But they were very distrustful. It was difficult to make them understand that no harm would be done them. Some few turned up, but practically the New Year's Day passed unnoticed. They straggled in by slow degrees, finding it exceedingly difficult to persuade themselves to abandon their mountain fastnesses for the tender mercies of the white man, but as a matter of fact all with the exception of the small parties out with Palmer and Parkinson came in within a fortnight of the day appointed, and the last were only out three months.

But the Assembly because of this laxness, felt they might break their pledged word, and they banished the majority of the Maroons with incredible foolishness, considering that the negro line is supposed to be drawn at the 40th parallel of latitude, to Nova Scotia. Perhaps they hoped to destroy them, root and branch. There, as was only to be expected, they did not do well, and finally they were taken to Sierra Leone, where I read they made valuable settlers and helped the colony greatly. I was glad they did. And then I remembered that in Pree Town I had met the most bumptious, the most aggressive, the most unpleasant black men it has ever, except in Liberia, been my lot to come across, and I felt my sympathies weaken.

Jamaica was not unmindful of these her children whom she hated. For a small island she spent an enormous sum of money on their welfare. £46,000 was expended in trying to colonise them comfortably, and this was supplemented by the British Government.

General Walpole was bitterly angry. He had given his word, and the country had broken it, and in his turn he declined to accept the sword of honour which the Assembly voted him in honour of his bloodless victory, and declined it in such terms that the Assembly considered the letter a misrepresentation of their proceedings and ordered it to be expunged from their minutes.

Not all of the Maroons were banished. Those who came in by the 1st of January 1796 were allowed to stay if they so pleased, and they settled about their old town and about Accompong, but their teeth were drawn. They were no greater danger now than any of the other black people. Less, in fact, for they had a certain contempt for the slaves, and regarded themselves as on a par with the white men.

The people about Maroon Town now do not think of themselves as Maroons. The day I went up, when we had gone as far as we could within a mile and a half of the old Maroon Town, the people came crowding round, and they looked much like the dark folks who lived lower down in the mountains. One yellow man brought me a can full of green coffee berries.

“No, not for sale, for the lady to remember we's by.” I accepted the gift, so graciously given, and I asked the giver's name.

“Heed,” said he, and I said I'd put him in a book, but I don't believe he understood what I said. I felt in my pocket. I know of old the African likes a return present, but I had forgotten my purse, and my host settled the difficulty.

“Take him round to the Chinaman's shop,” he said to his driver, “and give him a drink,” and my yellow friend, whom I thought must be grandson to one of those long-dead soldiers, accepted the offer with a smile.