The weekly Anglo-African., 1860-05-05

old monkeys Travelled ceaselessly up ana
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 pro-
miscuously playing and houncing, like SO
many tritons and mermaids, in the water"
And when the troops administrative
hundred fine young men, the oldest not
thirty, all arrayed in new uniforms and
bearing orange-fowers in their caps, a bri-
dial wreath for beautiful Guiana-it is no
wonder that the Creole ladies were in
ecstasy, and the boyish recruits little fore
saw the day, when, reduced to a few
dozen, bare-footed and ragged as fIbus-
tiers, their last survivors would re-embark
from a country beside which even Holland
looked dry and even Scotland comtorta-
BILE.
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
Danish. The first object which met Sted-
mans eye, as he stepped on shore, was the
figure of young girl stripped to receive
two hundred lashes, and chained to hun
dred- pound-weight And the few first
days gave glimpse into state of society
worthy of this exhibition-men without
mercy, women without modesty, the black
man a slave to the white mans passions,
and the white man slave to his own.
The present West India society in its
worst forms is probably mere dilution of
the utter prohigacy of those days. Greek
or Roman decline produced nothing more
facilitating or destructive than the ordin-
airy like of Surinam planter, and his one
virtue of hospitality only led to more un-
bridled excuses and completed the work
of vice. No wonder that Stedman himself,
who, with all his peculiarities, was essen
tally simple and manly, soon became dis
SuSlcu, anu UlollO udDtC W SCG INV IhC
woods and cultivate the society of the Ma
rooms.
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 -four
ishing their honorary silver~mounted
canes in the streets of Paramaribo. Fugi-
tive negroes had begun to establish them
selves in the woods from the time when
the colony was finally ceded by the Eng
lish to the Dutch, in 1874. The first open
outbreak occurred in 1926, when the plan
tations 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 treaty, in l749. 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 barrel of gunpowder as basis, and
of course an explosion followed this one.
The colonists naturally evaded the last
item of the bargain, and the rebels, receiv-
ing the gifts and remarking the omission
of the part of Hamlet, asked contemptu-
ously if the Europeans expected negroes
to subsist on combs and looking glasses
Now hostilities at once began; new body
of slaves on the Ouca river revolted; the
colonial government was changed in con-
sequence, 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 gen.
erals, Captain Araby and Captain Boston,
agreed upon truce for year, during
which the colonial government might de-
eide for peace or war, the Maroons declar-
ing themselves Indifferent. Finally the
government chose peace, delivered ammu-
milton, and made treaty, in 1851; the
white and black plenipotentiaries exchang-
ed English oaths and then negro oaths,
each tasting drop of the others blood
during the latter ceremony, amid volley
of remarkable incantations from the black
gadOnaan or priest After some final Skin
mishes, in which the rebels almost always
triumphed, the treaty was at length &C
cepted by all the various villages of Ma
rooms. 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
might have been different; but this fact
had not reached them, nor had the rumors
of instruction in Brazil, among negro and
Indian slaves. They consented, therefore,
to the peace "They write from Surinam,"
says the annual Register" for January
%, 1851, "that the Dutch governor, find
ing himself unable to subdue the rebel ne
groes Of that country by force, hath wisely
followed the example of Governor Trelaw-
ney at Jamaica, and concluded an AMIGA
BILE treaty with them; in consequence of
which, all the negroes of the woods are
acknowledged to be free, and all that is