The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1901-04-20
GUIANA'S WILD BLACKS.
ESCAPED SLA YES and CAME FROM
AFRICA TWO CENTURIES AGO.
They Thrive in PestiIential Jungies
Which White Men Dare Not Enter
Males of Magnificent Muscular Devei-
opment-Seem to Care Little for Gold
and Less for Work.

and Less for Work.
For nearly two hundred years ir
equatorial South America a race o.
wild negroes has existed, remarkable
enough in itself, but the more so from
the fact that the first members of II
were brought from the coast of Africa
as slaves. Although many strange peo-
pies have been discovered in the great
north central portion Of South Ameri-
ca, none of those Indigenous to the
country has had the Ethiopian charac-
teristics of color, form or facial type.
In the great swamps of the Guianas
however lying to the north Of the Am
aZon river, and between it and the ORR
noco, live the bush niggers," numer-
GUS, well organized, in settled villages,
and as much at home in the poisonous,
impenetrable jungles and on the waters
of the black lagoons which penetrate
them as is the resident of New York in
the streets of his native city
On map Of South America, pub
lished in Paris in 174S, Of which the
original is in the library of Harvard
college, there is laid down at the head
of the Surinam river, in Dutch Guiana,
at a distance of about two hundred
miles inland, a settlement of 'negres
marons" or runaway negroes. Consid-
cradle mention is made in the early his
tory of the Guiana plantations of ne
gro slaves escaping from their masters
and flying, no one knew where, into the
jungle. The map Of D'Anville howev-
er, cited above, appears to have been
the first record of their having estab-
lished a settlement. Undoubtedly the
malarial climate Of the swamps border
ing on the Essequibo, Sarramacca, Sur
imam and Marrowine rivers was the
protection Of the fgitives For while
harmless or nearly so to the negro 1t
was little short of deadly to the white
man. Thus the probability Is that the
negro, once he got hundred miles or
so UP one Of the rivers in his canoe, was
not pursued. Although increased pre-
cautions were naturally taken by the
planters to prevent their slaves from
Joining their fellows in the bush, the
flight of the negroes to the jungle ap-
pears to have continued In desultory
way until the abolition Of slavery in
the colonies. The bush niggers even be-
came very bold, and frequently made
sorties on the plantations for the pur-
pose of procuring wives.
At present the bush niggers, as they
are universally called, number about
ten thousand and inhabit principally
the part of Dutch Guiana, or Surinam,
situated at from one to two hundred
miles inland FROM and to the south OF,
the north coast of South America. A
few are found in Demerara Or British
Guiana, and still more in Cayenne, or
French Guiana. They have about fifty
villages Of various size, and these are
generally well hidden in the forest, at
some distance from the rivers, which
are the only means of traversing these
tropical wildernesses. The region lies
from three to five degrees of latitude
north Of the equator, and is generally
reckoned as one of the most unhealthy
localities known to white men. 1t