were enlisted shortly after a number of their
recently imported countrymen were wandering freely over the country,
working either as free labourers, or settling, to use an apt
American phrase, as squatters; and to assert that the recruit, while
under military probation, is better off than the free Trinidad
labourer, who goes where he lists and earns as much in one day as
will keep him for three days, is an absurdity. Accordingly we find
that Lieutenant-Colonel Bush, who commanded the 1st West India
Regiment, thought that the mutiny was mainly owing to the ill advice
of their civil, or, we should rather say, unmilitary countrymen.
This, to a certain degree, was the fact: but, by the declaration of
Daaga and many of his countrymen, it is evident the seeds of mutiny
were sown on the passage from Africa.

'It has been asserted that the recruits were driven to mutiny by
hard treatment of their commanding officers. There seems not the
slightest truth in this assertion; they were treated with fully as
much kindness as their situation would admit of, and their chief was
peculiarly a favourite of Colonel Bush and the officers,
notwithstanding Daaga's violent and ferocious temper often caused
complaints to be brought against him.

'A correspondent of the Naval and Military Gazette was under an
apprehension that the mutineers would be joined by the praedial
apprentices of the circumjacent estates: not the slightest
foundation existed for this apprehension. Some months previous to
this Daaga had planned a mutiny, but this was interrupted by sending
a part of the Paupau and Yarraba recruits to St. Lucia. The object
of all those conspiracies was to get back to Guinea, which they
thought they could accomplish by marching to eastward.

'On the night of the 17th of June 1837, the people of San Josef were
kept awake by the recruits, about 280 in number, singing the war-
song of the Paupaus. This wild song consisted of a short air and
chorus. The tone was, although wild, not inharmonious, and the
words rather euphonious. As near as our alphabet can convey them,
they ran thus:--

"Dangkarree
Au fey,
Oluu werrei,
Au lay,"

which may be rendered almost literally by the following couplet:--

Air by the chief: "Come to plunder, come to slay;"
Chorus of followers: "We are ready to obey."

'About three o'clock in the morning their war-song (highly
characteristic of a predatory tribe)