The weekly Anglo-African., 1860-05-05
PRICE FOUR CENTS.

almost recalls the tlme-honored preScrlp-
ton of "a light heart and thin pair OF
breeches," for he attributes his good con-
dition to his keeping up his spirits and
kicking off his shoes. Daily bathing In
the river had also something to do with it,
and, indeed, hydropathy (this may not
be generally KNOWN was first learned of
the West India Maroons, who did their
packing in wet clay-and it was carried
by DR.. Wright to England. But his ex-
traordinary personal qualities must have
contributed most to his preservation. New
er did "meagre, starved, black, burnt,
and ragged tatterdemalion," as he calls
himself, carry about him such fund of
sentiment, philosophy, poetry, and art.
He had great faculty for sketching, as
the engravings in his volumes, with all
their odd peculiarities, show; his deepest
woes he coined always into couplets, and
fortified himself against hopeless despair
with Ovid and Valerius Flaccus, Pope's
Homer" and Thomson's Seasons" Above
all reigned his passion for natural history,
ready balm for every i'll. Here he was
never wanting to the occasion, and, to do
Justice to Dutch Guiana, the occasion never
was wanting to him. Were his men sick
ening, the peccaries were always healthy
without, and the cockroaches within the
camp; just escaping from she-jaguar, he
satisfies himself, ere he fees, that the print
of her claws on the sand is precisely the
size of pewter dinner-plate; bitten by
scorpion, he makes sure of his scientific de-
scription in case he should expire OF the
bite; is the water undrinkable, there Is at
least some rational interest in the number
of legs possessed by the centipedes which
re-occupy it. This is the highest triumph
of man over his accidents, when he thus
turns his pains to gains, and becomes an
entomologist in the tropics.
Meanwhile the rebels kept their own
course in the forests, and occasionally de-
seconded upon plantations beside the very
river on whose upper waters the useless
troops were sickening and dying Sted-
man himself made several campaigns, with
| long intervals of sickness, before he came
any nearer to the enemy than to burn a
deserted village or destroy rice field.
Sometimes they left the Charon and the
Cerberus moored by grape.vines to the
pine-trees, and made expeditions into the
woods single file. Our ensign, true to
himself, gives the minutest schedule of the
order of march, and the oldest little dia-
grams of manikins with cooked hats, and
blacker manikins bearing burdens. First,
negroes with bill-hooks to clear the way;
then the vanguard; then the main body,
interspersed with negroes bearing boxes of
ball-cartridges; then the rear-guard, with
many more negroes, bearing camp-equipage,
provisions, and new rum, surnamed kill
devil" and appropriately followed by
sort of palanquin for the disabled. Thus
arrayed, they marched valorously forth in
to the woods, to some given point: then
they turned, marched back to the boats,
then rowed back to camp, and straightway
went into the hospital. immediately up
on this, the coast being clear, Baron and his
rebels marched out again and proceeded to
business.
In the course of years, these Maroons
had acquired their own peculiar tactics.
They built stockaded fortresses on marshy
islands, accessible by fords which they
alone could traverse. These they defend.
ed further by sharp wooden pins, or crows
feet, concealed beneath the surface of the
miry ground-and, latterly, by the more
Substantial protection of cannon, which
they dragged into the woods, and learned
to use. Having always more men than
weapons, they arranged their warriors in
threes-one to use the musket, another to
take his place, if wounded Or slain, and
third to drag away the body. They had
Indian stealthiness and swiftness, with
more than Indian discipline, discharged
their fire with some approach to regularity,
in three successive lines, the signals being
given by the captains horn. They were
full of ingenuity; marked their movements
for each other by scattered leaves and
blazed trees; ran zigzag, to dodge bullets;
gave wooden guns to their unarmed men,
to frighten the plantation negroes ON their
guerrilla expeditions; and borrowed the
red caps of the black rangers whom they
slew, to bewilder the aim of the others.
One of them, finding himself close to the
muzzle of rangers gun, threw up his
hand hastily. "WhatP he exclaimed,
"will you fire on one Of your own party 7"
"God forbid p cried the ranger, dropping
his piece, and was instantly shot through
the body by the Maroon, who the next
instant had disappeared in the woods.
These rebels were no saints; their wor-
ship was obi-worship; the women had not
far outgrown the plantation standard Of
chastity, and the men drank "kill-devil"
like their betters. Stedman was struck
with the difference between the meaning
of the word good in rebellious circles and
in reputable at must, however, be OBJ
served that what we Europeans call good
character was by the Africans looked upon
as detestable, especially by those born in
the woods, whose only crime consisted in
avenging the wrongs done to their FORE
fathers" But if martial virtues be virtues,
such were theirs. Not a rebel ever turn
ed traitor or reformer, ever hinched in a
battle or under torture, ever violated
treaty or private promise. But it was
their power of endurance which was es-