visited with fire and sword. After a 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, Captain Araby and Captain 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 January 23, 1761, "that