while in Dutch Guiana that she met Oroonoko, in the
circumstances described in the story. No doubt she has
idealised her hero somewhat, but she does not seem to have
exaggerated the extraordinary adventures of the young African
chief. In the licentious age of the Restoration, when she had
become famous--or, rather, notorious--as a writer of unseemly
plays, she astonished the town, and achieved real fame by
relating the story of Oroonoko's life. There are few plots of
either plays or novels so striking as that of "Oroonoko." It
is the first of those romances of the outlands, which, from
the days of Defoe to the days of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, have
been one of the glories of English literature.


_I.--The Stolen Bride_


I do not pretend to entertain the reader with a feigned hero, whose
adventures I can manage according to my fancy. Of many of the events
here set down, I was an eye-witness, and what I did not see myself, I
learnt from the mouth of Oroonoko. When I made his acquaintance I was
living in that part of our South American colony called Surinam, which
we lately ceded to the Dutch--a great mistake, I think, for the land was
fertile, and the natives were friendly, and many Englishmen had set up
sugar plantations, which they worked by means of negroes. Most of these
slaves came from that part of Africa known as Coromantien. The
Coromantiens, being very warlike, were continually fighting other
nations, and they always had many captives ready to be sold as slaves to
our planters.