s one
thing more worth mention, which is that Morgan, the buccaneer, whose deeds
of shameful cruelty at Panama we have described, became afterwards deputy
governor of Jamaica, as Sir Henry Morgan, which title was given him by
King Charles II. It is not easy to know why this was done, unless it be
true, as was then said, that Charles shared in the spoils of his bloody
deeds of piracy. However that be, Morgan, as governor, turned hotly upon
his former associates, and hunted down the buccaneers without mercy,
hanging and shooting all he could lay hands on, until he fairly put an end
to the trade which had made him rich.

Let us come now to the story of the Maroons, that nest of fugitives who
made things hot enough for the English in Jamaica for many years. When
Cromwell's soldiers took possession of Jamaica few or none of those
warlike Indians, who had given Columbus so much trouble, were left. In
their place were about two thousand negro slaves, and these fled to the
mountains, as the Indians had done before them. There they remained in
freedom, though the English did their best to coax them to come down and
enjoy the blessings of slavery again, and though they tried their utmost
to drive them down from the cliffs by means of soldiers and guns. In spite
of all the whites could do, the negroes, "Maroons," as they were called,
long preserved their liberty.

In 1663 the British, finding that they could not master the warlike
fugitives by force, offered them a full pardon, with liberty and twenty
acres of land apiece, if they would yield. But the negroes, who were
masters of the whole mountainous interior, where thousands could live in
plenty, chose to stay where they were and not to trust to the slippery
faith of the white man. And so it went on until after 1730, when the
depredations of the negroes upon the settlements became so annoying that
two regiments of British regulars and all the militia of the island were
sent into the mountains to put them down. As it proved, the negroes still
held their own, not one of them being taken prisoner, and very few of them
killed. They were decidedly masters of the situation.

At this time the chief of the Maroons, Cudjoe by name, was a dusky dwarf,
sable, ugly, and uncouth, but shrewd and wary, and fully capable of
discounting all the wiles of his enemies. No Christian he, but a full
Pagan, worshipping, with his followers, the African gods of Obeah, or the
deities of the wizards and