long conflict, their chief, Adoe, was induced to make a treaty, in 1749.
The rebels promised to keep the peace, and in turn were promised freedom,
money, tools, clothes, and, finally, arms and ammunition.

But no permanent peace was ever made upon a barrel of gunpowder as a
basis; and, of course, an explosion followed this one. The colonists
naturally evaded the last item of the bargain; and the rebels, receiving
the gifts, and remarking the omission of the part of Hamlet, asked
contemptuously if the Europeans expected negroes to subsist on combs and
looking-glasses? New hostilities at once began; a new body of slaves on
the Ouca River revolted; the colonial government was changed in
consequence, and fresh troops shipped from Holland; and after four
different embassies had been sent into the woods, the rebels began to
listen to reason. The black generals, Capt. Araby and Capt. Boston,
agreed upon a truce for a year, during which the colonial government
might decide for peace or war, the Maroons declaring themselves
indifferent. Finally the government chose peace, delivered ammunition,
and made a treaty, in 1761; the white and black plenipotentiaries
exchanged English oaths and then negro oaths, each tasting a drop of the
other's blood during the latter ceremony, amid a volley of remarkable
incantations from the black _gadoman_ or priest. After some final
skirmishes, in which the rebels almost always triumphed, the treaty was
at length accepted by all the various villages of Maroons. Had they known
that at this very time five thousand slaves in Berbice were just rising
against their masters, and were looking to them for assistance, the
result might have been different; but this fact had not reached them, nor
had the rumors of insurrection in Brazil among negro and Indian slaves.
They consented, therefore, to the peace. "They write from Surinam," says
the "Annual Register" for Jan. 23, 1761, "that the Dutch governor,
finding himself unable to subdue the rebel negroes of that country by