"The woods lament for me," "Disturb me, if you dare," "Take a tasting, if
you like it," "Come, try me, if you be men," "God knows me, and none
else," "I shall moulder before I shall be taken." Some were only
plantation-grounds with a few huts, and were easily laid waste; but all
were protected more or less by their mere situations. Quagmires
surrounded them, covered by a thin crust of verdure, sometimes broken
through by one man's weight, when the victim sank hopelessly into the
black and bottomless depths below. In other directions there was a solid
bottom, but inconveniently covered by three or four feet of water,
through which the troops waded breast-deep, holding their muskets high in
the air, unable to reload them when once discharged, and liable to be
picked off by rebel scouts, who ingeniously posted themselves in the tops
of palm-trees.

Through this delectable region Col. Fougeaud and his followers slowly
advanced, drawing near the fatal shore where Capt. Meyland's detachment
had just been defeated, and where their mangled remains still polluted
the beach. Passing this point of danger without attack, they suddenly met
a small party of rebels, each bearing on his back a beautifully woven
hamper of snow-white rice: these loads they threw down, and disappeared.
Next appeared an armed body from the same direction, who fired upon them
once, and swiftly retreated; and in a few moments the soldiers came upon
a large field of standing rice, beyond which lay, like an amphitheatre,
the rebel village. But between the village and the field had been piled
successive defences of logs and branches, behind which simple redoubts
the Maroons lay concealed. A fight ensued, lasting forty minutes, during
which nearly every soldier and ranger was wounded; but, to their great
amazement, not one was killed. This was an enigma to them until after the
skirmish, when the surgeon found that most of them had been struck, not
by bullets, but by various substitutes, such as pebbles, coat-buttons,