Is it any wonder that when caught the bush negro or maroon was severely punished, and that the utmost rigour of the law was exercised? As for flogging, every one knows how common that was at the beginning of the present century. Some of us can even look back to a time when the use of the rod and whip on delicate children was a matter of course. Even fine ladies took their little ones to see executions that now horrify us to think of; in a similar way the planter's wife stood at her window to see the punishment of her house-servant.
We could tell of negroes burnt to death, where a downpour of rain put out the fires and left them to linger in torment for hours, of taking pieces of flesh from the unhappy criminals with red-hot pincers, and, most horrible of all, breaking on the wheel. These punishments often took place in the middle of a town, but only on one occasion have we seen any mention of the horror of the scene, and this referred to the smell of burning flesh. Yet the criminals--for it must be remembered that they had been legally convicted and sentenced--showed a stoical indifference to pain almost incredible. As savages they gloried in showing their ability to endure torture, only craving sometimes for a pipe of tobacco to hold between their teeth until it fell.
[Illustration: THE EXECUTION OF BREAKING ON THE RACK.
The maroons or bush negroes began to form communities on the Main and in the larger islands from very early times. In Jamaica they were the remnant of the Spanish slaves who ran away on the arrival of the English, with accessions from deserters at later periods; in Surinam some of those who had been sent into the forest to prevent their capture by French corsairs. In both places they maintained their independence, and ultimately made treaties with the colonial authorities, greatly to their own advantage. In Essequebo and Demerara they were kept down by subsidising Arawak Indian trackers, who hunted them from savannah to forest, and from forest to swamp, killing and capturing them almost as fast as they ran away. In the smaller and more settled islands the runaways were generally recaptured at once and severely punished as a warning to others. There the more daring plotted insurrections which often caused much trouble for a few days until suppressed. They did not last long, for the negroes were wanting in the power of combination, because they all wanted to be leaders. Then there was generally some faithful slave or white man's mistress to give the warning, which sometimes caused such prompt action that the outbreak did not occur at all. Yet with all that the danger was serious, and one that could hardly be coped with by forts and batteries.