een sent into the forest to prevent their capture
by French corsairs. In both places they maintained their independence,
and ultimately made treaties with the colonial authorities, greatly to
their own advantage. In Essequebo and Demerara they were kept down by
subsidising Arawak Indian trackers, who hunted them from savannah to
forest, and from forest to swamp, killing and capturing them almost as
fast as they ran away. In the smaller and more settled islands the
runaways were generally recaptured at once and severely punished as a
warning to others. There the more daring plotted insurrections which
often caused much trouble for a few days until suppressed. They did not
last long, for the negroes were wanting in the power of combination,
because they all wanted to be leaders. Then there was generally some
faithful slave or white man's mistress to give the warning, which
sometimes caused such prompt action that the outbreak did not occur at
all. Yet with all that the danger was serious, and one that could hardly
be coped with by forts and batteries.

As early as the year 1649 a plot for a general rising in Barbados was
discovered through the information of a bond-servant. All the whites
were to have been murdered, but fortunately the ringleaders were
arrested before the time fixed and eight of them condemned to death.
Then in 1676, under the leadership of a Coromantee, it was arranged that
on a certain fixed day, at a signal to be given by blowing shells, all
the cane-fields should be set on fire, the white men killed, and their
women retained by the negroes as their wives. This also was frustrated
by information received from a house negress. Hearing two men talking
of the matter, she made inquiries, and learnt of the plot in time to
inform her master. Six of the prisoners were burnt alive and eleven
beheaded, while five committed suicide by hanging themselves before the
trial. The story was told in a pamphlet entitled, "Great Newes from the
Barbados, or a true and faithful account of the great conspiracy." Yet
again in 1693, after a fearful epidemic had much reduced the number of
the whites, a third conspiracy was set on foot. The Governor was to have
been killed, the magazine seized, and the forts surprised and taken.
When the plot was nearly ripe two of the leaders were overheard
conversing about it and instantly arrested. They were hung in chains for
four days without food or drink, promises of pardon being made if