Guiana, to subdue rebel negroes. He never imagined that the year 1773
would behold him beneath the rainy season in a tropical country, wading
through marshes and splashing through lakes, exploring with his feet for
submerged paths, commanding impracticable troops, and commanded by an
insufferable colonel, feeding on greegree worms and fed upon by
mosquitos, howled at by jaguars, hissed at by serpents, and shot at by
those exceedingly unattainable gentlemen, "still longed for, never seen,"
the Maroons of Surinam.

Yet, as our young ensign sailed up the Surinam River, the world of tropic
beauty came upon him with enchantment. Dark, moist verdure was close
around him, rippling waters below; the tall trees of the jungle and the
low mangroves beneath were all hung with long vines and lianas, a maze of
cordage, like a fleet at anchor; lithe monkeys travelled ceaselessly up
and down these airy paths, in armies, bearing their young, like
knapsacks, on their backs; macaws and humming-birds, winged jewels, flew
from tree to tree. As they neared Paramaribo, the river became a smooth
canal among luxuriant plantations; the air was perfumed music, redolent
of orange-blossoms and echoing with the songs of birds and the sweet
plash of oars; gay barges came forth to meet them; "while groups of naked
boys and girls were promiscuously playing and flouncing, like so many
tritons and mermaids, in the water." And when the troops
disembarked,--five hundred fine young men, the oldest not thirty, all
arrayed in new uniforms and bearing orange-flowers in their caps, a
bridal wreath for beautiful Guiana,--it is no wonder that the Creole
ladies were in ecstasy; and the boyish recruits little foresaw the day,
when, reduced to a few dozens, barefooted and ragged as filibusters,
their last survivors would gladly re-embark from a country beside which
even Holland looked dry and even Scotland comfortable.