Black Rebellion | Page 9

beneath were all hung with long vines and
lianas, a maze of cordage, like a fleet at anchor; lithe monkeys travelled
ceaselessly up and down these airy paths, in armies, bearing their
young, like knapsacks, on their backs; macaws and humming-birds,
winged jewels, flew from tree to tree. As they neared Paramaribo, the
river became a smooth canal among luxuriant plantations; the air was
perfumed music, redolent of orange-blossoms and echoing with the
songs of birds and the sweet plash of oars; gay barges came forth to
meet them; "while groups of naked boys and girls were promiscuously
playing and flouncing, like so many tritons and mermaids, in the
water." And when the troops disembarked,--five hundred fine young
men, the oldest not thirty, all arrayed in new uniforms and bearing
orange-flowers in their caps, a bridal wreath for beautiful Guiana,--it is
no wonder that the Creole ladies were in ecstasy; and the boyish

recruits little foresaw the day, when, reduced to a few dozens,
barefooted and ragged as filibusters, their last survivors would gladly
re-embark from a country beside which even Holland looked dry and
even Scotland comfortable.
For over all that earthly paradise there brooded not alone its terrible
malaria, its days of fever and its nights of deadly chill, but the worse
shadows of oppression and of sin, which neither day nor night could
banish. The first object which met Stedman's eye, as he stepped on
shore, was the figure of a young girl stripped to receive two hundred
lashes, and chained to a hundred-pound weight. And the few first days
gave a glimpse into a state of society worthy of this exhibition,--men
without mercy, women without modesty, the black man a slave to the
white man's passions, and the white man a slave to his own. The later
West-Indian society in its worst forms is probably a mere dilution of
the utter profligacy of those early days. Greek or Roman decline
produced nothing more debilitating or destructive than the ordinary life
of a Surinam planter, and his one virtue of hospitality only led to more
unbridled excesses and completed the work of vice. No wonder that
Stedman himself, who, with all his peculiarities, was essentially simple
and manly, soon became disgusted, and made haste to get into the
woods and cultivate the society of the Maroons.
The rebels against whom this expedition was sent were not the original
Maroons of Surinam, but a later generation. The originals had long
since established their independence, and their leaders were flourishing
their honorary silver-mounted canes in the streets of Paramaribo.
Fugitive negroes had begun to establish themselves in the woods from
the time when the colony was finally ceded by the English to the Dutch,
in 1674. The first open outbreak occurred in 1726, when the plantations
on the Seramica River revolted; it was found impossible to subdue
them, and the government very imprudently resolved to make an
example of eleven captives, and thus terrify the rest of the rebels. They
were tortured to death, eight of the eleven being women: this drove the
others to madness, and plantation after plantation was visited with fire
and sword. After a long conflict, their chief, Adoe, was induced to
make a treaty, in 1749. The rebels promised to keep the peace, and in
turn were promised freedom, money, tools, clothes, and, finally, arms
and ammunition.

But no permanent peace was ever made upon a barrel of gunpowder as
a basis; and, of course, an explosion followed this one. The colonists
naturally evaded the last item of the bargain; and the rebels, receiving
the gifts, and remarking the omission of the part of Hamlet, asked
contemptuously if the Europeans expected negroes to subsist on combs
and looking-glasses? New hostilities at once began; a new body of
slaves on the Ouca River revolted; the colonial government was
changed in consequence, and fresh troops shipped from Holland; and
after four different embassies had been sent into the woods, the rebels
began to listen to reason. The black generals, Capt. Araby and Capt.
Boston, agreed upon a truce for a year, during which the colonial
government might decide for peace or war, the Maroons declaring
themselves indifferent. Finally the government chose peace, delivered
ammunition, and made a treaty, in 1761; the white and black
plenipotentiaries exchanged English oaths and then negro oaths, each
tasting a drop of the other's blood during the latter ceremony, amid a
volley of remarkable incantations from the black gadoman or priest.
After some final skirmishes, in which the rebels almost always
triumphed, the treaty was at length accepted by all the various villages
of Maroons. Had they known that at this very time five thousand slaves
in Berbice were just rising against their masters, and were looking to
them for assistance, the result