r by a hasty retreat. In this adventure, one colonist
and an English seaman lost their lives, and two other persons were
slightly wounded.

The recurrence of such events did not fail to keep up a spirit of
animosity between the Dey tribe and the colonists, whose principal crime
in the eyes of the natives, was their aversion to the slave trade; an
aversion which struck at the root of all the interest, fears, and
prejudices of the Deys. Old King Peter, the venerable patriarch of the
nation, and with whom the first treaty for the purchase of the ground
had been negotiated, was capitally arraigned and brought to trial on a
charge of betraying the interests of his subjects, by selling their
country. The accusation was substantiated, and it became doubtful
whether the punishment of high treason, would not be executed upon a
monarch, whom they had been accustomed to venerate and to obey for more
than thirty years.

Under these circumstances the settlers became seriously alarmed
respecting the nature of the intercourse which might become necessary to
the policy of Bacaia, the king of the larger island, and from whom they
had received many proofs of friendship, in secret supplies of fuel and
water. But as his plantations, with numerous detached bodies of his
subjects, were entirety exposed to the power of the Deys, it seemed
absolutely requisite that his friendship with that tribe should not be
affected by any further acts of kindness to a people so inimical to
their views. Hence the suspicions of the colonists became naturally
excited against Bacaia. It appeared that the considerations which had
been so painfully entertained on the part of the colonists, operated no
less powerfully upon the mind of the chief; for he immediately summoned
to his aid one of the most powerful and famous chiefs of the Condoes, by
whose protection he had for many years been sustained in his dangerous
contiguity to such quarrelsome neighbours.

King Boatswain, whose political influence over the maritime tribes of
the country was nearly absolute, and whose name had long been the terror
of his countrymen, replied to the request of his protegee with that
prompt alacrity which characterized all his actions, almost immediately
arriving in person, accompanied with an armed force sufficient to carry
into effect any measure that might seem most desirable to their chief.
He, with that apparent modesty in which extreme pride delights to dress
itself, and whi