said Mr. Klynhaus, the last planter with whom they parted, "you may
depend on never seeing a soul of them, unless they attack you off
guard; but the climate, the climate, will murder you all." Bringing
with them constitutions already impaired by the fevers and dissipation
of Paramaribo, the poor boys began to perish long before they began to
fight. Wading in water all day, hanging their hammocks over water at
night, it seemed a moist existence, even compared with the climate of
England and the soil of Holland. It was "Invent a shovel and be a
magistrate," even more than Andrew Marvell found it in the United
Provinces. In fact, Raynal evidently thinks that nothing but Dutch
experience in hydraulics could ever have cultivated Surinam.

The two gun-boats which held one division of the expedition were merely
old sugar-barges, roofed over with boards, and looking like coffins.
They were pleasantly named the "Charon" and the "Cerberus," but Stedman
thought that the "Sudden Death" and the "Wilful Murder" would have been
titles more appropriate. The chief duty of the troops consisted in
lying at anchor at the intersections of wooded streams, waiting for
rebels who never came. It was dismal work, and the raw recruits were
full of the same imaginary terrors which have haunted other heroes less
severely tested: the monkeys never rattled the cocoa-nuts against the
trees, but they all heard the axes of Maroon wood-choppers; and when a
sentinel declared, one night, that he had seen a negro go down the
river in a canoe, with his pipe lighted, the whole force was called to
arms--against a firefly. In fact, the insect race brought by far the
most substantial dangers. The rebels eluded the military, but the
chigres, locusts, scorpions, and bush-spiders were ever ready to come
half-way to meet them; likewise serpents and alligators proffered them
the freedom of the forests and exhibited a hospitality almost
excessive. Snakes twenty feet long hung their seductive length from the