Europe would repair his ruined fortunes, and he could return to treat
himself to the purchase of his own wedded wife. He describes, with
unaffected pathos, their parting scene,--though, indeed, there were
several successive partings,--and closes the description in a
characteristic manner: "My melancholy having surpassed all description, I
at last determined to weather one or two painful years in her absence;
and in the afternoon went to dissipate my mind at a Mr. Roux' cabinet of
Indian curiosities; where, as my eye chanced to fall on a rattlesnake, I
will, before I leave the colony, describe this dangerous reptile."

It was impossible to write the history of the Maroons of Surinam except
through the biography of our ensign (at last promoted captain), because
nearly all we know of them is through his quaint and picturesque
narrative, with its profuse illustrations by his own hand. It is not
fair, therefore, to end without chronicling his safe arrival in Holland,
on June 3, 1777. It is a remarkable fact, that, after his life in the
woods, even the Dutch looked slovenly to his eyes. "The inhabitants, who
crowded about us, appeared but a disgusting assemblage of ill-formed and
ill-dressed rabble,--so much had my prejudices been changed by living
among Indians and blacks: their eyes seemed to resemble those of a pig;
their complexions were like the color of foul linen; they seemed to have
no teeth, and to be covered over with rags and dirt. This prejudice,
however, was not against these people only, but against all Europeans in
general, when compared to the sparkling eyes, ivory teeth, shining skin,
and remarkable cleanliness of those I had left behind me." Yet, in spite
of these superior attractions, he never recrossed the Atlantic; for his
Joanna died soon after, and his promising son, being sent to the father,
was educated in England, became a midshipman in the navy, and was lost at
sea. With his elegy, in which the last depths of bathos are sadly sounded
by a mourning parent,--who is induced to print them only by "the effect