ustration: A REBEL NEGRO

(_From Stedman's "Surinam."_)]

The slaves often ran away, and had to be hunted for and brought back. In
the larger islands and on the Main they hid in the forest and swamp,
where they formed communities, to which other runaways flocked until
they became strong enough to hold their own. From these recesses they
often came forth to pillage the plantations, murder the whites, and get
the slaves to go off with them in a body. If the buccaneer was ferocious
he had at least some method in his madness; the poor ignorant African,
on the contrary, let his passions dominate him entirely. In revenge for
fancied tyrannies he would commit the most atrocious crimes, torturing
his prisoners by cutting them to pieces or even flaying while they still
lived.

Is it any wonder that when caught the bush negro or maroon was severely
punished, and that the utmost rigour of the law was exercised? As for
flogging, every one knows how common that was at the beginning of the
present century. Some of us can even look back to a time when the use of
the rod and whip on delicate children was a matter of course. Even fine
ladies took their little ones to see executions that now horrify us to
think of; in a similar way the planter's wife stood at her window to see
the punishment of her house-servant.

We could tell of negroes burnt to death, where a downpour of rain put
out the fires and left them to linger in torment for hours, of taking
pieces of flesh from the unhappy criminals with red-hot pincers, and,
most horrible of all, breaking on the wheel. These punishments often
took place in the middle of a town, but only on one occasion have we
seen any mention of the horror of the scene, and this referred to the
smell of burning flesh. Yet the criminals--for it must be remembered
that they had been legally convicted and sentenced--showed a stoical
indifference to pain almost incredible. As savages they gloried in
showing their ability to endure torture, only craving sometimes for a
pipe of tobacco to hold between their teeth until it fell.

[Illustration: THE EXECUTION OF BREAKING ON THE RACK.

(_From Stedman's "Surinam."_)]

The maroons or bush negroes began to form communities on the Main and in
the larger islands from very early times. In Jamaica they were the
remnant of the Spanish slaves who ran away on the arrival of the
English, with accessions from deserters at later periods; in Surinam
some of those who had b