Black Rebellion | Page 5

against whom the Government could bring nearly fifteen

hundred regular troops and several thousand militiamen. Lord Balcarres
himself took the command, and, eager to crush the affair, promptly
marched a large force up to Trelawney Town, and was glad to march
back again as expeditiously as possible. In his very first attack, he was
miserably defeated, and had to fly for his life, amid a perfect panic of
the troops, in which some forty or fifty were killed,--including Col.
Sandford, commanding the regulars, and the bullet-loving Col.
Gallimore, in command of the militia,--while not a single Maroon was
even wounded, so far as could be ascertained.
After this a good deal of bush-fighting took place. The troops gradually
got possession of several Maroon villages, but not till every hut had
been burnt by its owner. It was in the height of the rainy season; and,
between fire and water, the discomfort of the soldiers was enormous.
Meanwhile the Maroons hovered close around them in the woods,
heard all their orders, picked off their sentinels, and, penetrating
through their lines at night, burned houses and destroyed plantations far
below. The only man who could cope with their peculiar tactics was
Major James, the superintendent just removed by Government; and his
services were not employed, as he was not trusted. On one occasion,
however, he led a volunteer party farther into the mountains than any of
the assailants had yet penetrated, guided by tracks known to himself
only, and by the smell of the smoke of Maroon fires. After a very
exhausting march, including a climb of a hundred and fifty feet up the
face of a precipice, he brought them just within the entrance of
Guthrie's Defile. "So far," said he, pointing to the entrance, "you may
pursue, but no farther; no force can enter here; no white man except
myself, or some soldier of the Maroon establishment, has ever gone
beyond this. With the greatest difficulty I have penetrated four miles
farther, and not ten Maroons have gone so far as that. There are two
other ways of getting into the defile, practicable for the Maroons, but
not for any one of you. In neither of them can I ascend or descend with
my arms, which must be handed to me, step by step, as practised by the
Maroons themselves. One of the ways lies to the eastward, and the
other to the westward; and they will take care to have both guarded, if
they suspect that I am with you; which, from the route you have come
to-day, they will. They now see you, and if you advance fifty paces
more, they will convince you of it." At this moment a Maroon horn

sounded the notes indicating his name; and, as he made no answer, a
voice was heard, inquiring if he were among them. "If he is," said the
voice, "let him go back, we do not wish to hurt him, but as for the rest
of you, come on and try battle if you choose." But the gentlemen did
not choose.
In September the House of Assembly met. Things were looking worse
and worse. For five months a handful of negroes and mulattoes had
defied the whole force of the island, and they were defending their
liberty by precisely the same tactics through which their ancestors had
won it. Half a million pounds sterling had been spent within this time,
besides the enormous loss incurred by the withdrawal of so many
able-bodied men from their regular employments. "Cultivation was
suspended," says an eye-witness; "the courts of law had long been shut
up; and the island at large seemed more like a garrison under the power
of law-martial, than a country of agriculture and commerce, of civil
judicature, industry, and prosperity." Hundreds of the militia had died
of fatigue, large numbers had been shot down, the most daring of the
British officers had fallen; while the insurgents had been invariably
successful, and not one of them was known to have been killed. Capt.
Craskell, the banished superintendent, gave it to the Assembly as his
opinion, that the whole slave population of the island was in sympathy
with the Maroons, and would soon be beyond control. More alarming
still, there were rumors of French emissaries behind the scenes; and
though these were explained away, the vague terror remained. Indeed,
the lieutenant-governor announced in his message that he had
satisfactory evidence that the French Convention was concerned in the
revolt. A French prisoner, named Murenson, had testified that the
French agent at Philadelphia (Fauchet) had secretly sent a hundred and
fifty emissaries to the island, and threatened to land fifteen hundred
negroes. And though Murenson took it all back at last, yet the
Assembly was moved to make a new offer of