t was fully corroborated by many of the
mutineers, especially those who were shot with Daaga: they all said
the revolt never would have happened but for Donald Stewart, as he
was called by the officers; but Africans who were not of his tribe
called him Longa-longa, on account of his height.

'Such was this extraordinary man, who led the mutiny I am about to
relate.

'A quantity of captured Africans having been brought hither from the
islands of Grenada and Dominica, they were most imprudently induced
to enlist as recruits in the 1st West India Regiment. True it is,
we have been told they did this voluntarily: but, it may be asked,
if they had any will in the matter, how could they understand the
duties to be imposed on them by becoming soldiers, or how comprehend
the nature of an oath of allegiance? without which they could not,
legally speaking, be considered as soldiers. I attended the whole
of the trials of these men, and well know how difficult it was to
make them comprehend any idea which was at all new to them by means
of the best interpreters procurable.

'It has been said that by making those captured Negroes soldiers, a
service was rendered them: this I doubt. Formerly it was most true
that a soldier in a black regiment was better off than a slave; but
certainly a free African in the West Indies now is infinitely in a
better situation than a soldier, not only in a pecuniary point of
view, but in almost every other respect.

'To the African savage, while being drilled into the duties of a
soldier, many things seem absolute tyranny which would appear to a
civilised man a mere necessary restraint. To keep the restless body
of an African Negro in a position to which he has not been
accustomed--to cramp his splay-feet, with his great toes standing
out, into European shoes made for feet of a different form--to place
a collar round his neck, which is called a stock, and which to him
is cruel torture--above all, to confine him every night to his
barracks--are almost insupportable. One unacquainted with the
habits of the Negro cannot conceive with what abhorrence he looks on
having his disposition to nocturnal rambles checked by barrack
regulations. {172}

'Formerly the "King's man," as the black soldier loved to call
himself, looked (not without reason) contemptuously on the planter's
slave, although he himself was after all but a slave to the State:
but these recruits