, burned houses and destroyed plantations, far below. The
only man who could cope with their peculiar tactics was Major James, the
superintendent just removed by government,--and his services were not
employed, as he was not trusted. On one occasion, however, he led a
volunteer party farther into the mountains than any of the assailants
had yet penetrated, guided by tracks known to himself only, and by the
smell of the smoke of Maroon fires. After a very exhausting march,
including a climb of a hundred and fifty feet up the face of a
precipice, he brought them just within the entrance of Guthrie's Defile.
"So far," said he, pointing to the entrance, "you may pursue, but no
farther; no force can enter here; no white man except myself, or some
soldier of the Maroon establishment, has ever gone beyond this. With the
greatest difficulty I have penetrated four miles farther, and not ten
Maroons have gone so far as that. There are two other ways of getting
into the defile, practicable for the Maroons, but not for any one of
you. In neither of them can I ascend or descend with my arms, which must
be handed to me, step by step, as practised by the Maroons themselves.
One of the ways lies to the eastward, and the other to the westward; and
they will take care to have both guarded, if they suspect that I am with
you; which, from the route you have come to-day, they will. They now see
you, and if you advance fifty paces more, they will convince you of it."
At this moment a Maroon horn sounded the notes indicating his name, and,
as he made no answer, a voice was heard, inquiring if he were among
them. "If he is," said the voice, "let him go back, we do not wish to
hurt him; but as for the rest of you, come on and try battle, if you
choose." But the gentlemen did not choose.

In September the House of Assembly met. Things were looking worse and
worse. For five months a handful of negroes and mulattoes had defied the
whole force of the island; and they were defending their liberty by
precisely the same tactics through which their ancestors had won it.
Half a million pounds sterling had been spent within this time, besides
the enormous loss incurred by the withdrawal of so many able-bodied men
from their regular employments. "Cultivation was suspended," says an
eye-witness; "the courts of law had long been shut up; and the island at
large seemed more like a garrison under the power of law-martial, than a
country of agriculture and comm