oodhounds again
were imported. The Maroons offered to surrender on the express condition
that none of their number should be deported from the island, as the
legislature wished. General Walpole hesitated, but could get peace on no
other terms and gave his word. The Maroons surrendered their arms, and
immediately the whites seized six hundred of the ringleaders and
transported them to the snows of Nova Scotia! The legislature then voted a
sword worth twenty-five hundred dollars to General Walpole, which he
indignantly refused to accept. Eventually these exiled Maroons found their
way to Sierra Leone, West Africa, in time to save that colony to the
British crown.[88]

The pressing desire for peace with the Maroons on the part of the white
planters arose from the new sugar culture introduced in 1673. A greatly
increased demand for slaves followed, and between 1700 and 1786 six
hundred and ten thousand slaves were imported; nevertheless, so severely
were they driven, that there were only three hundred thousand Negroes in
Jamaica in the latter year.

Despite the Moravian missions and other efforts late in the eighteenth
century, unrest among the Jamaica slaves and freedmen grew and was
increased by the anti-slavery agitation in England and the revolt in
Hayti. There was an insurrection in 1796; and in 1831 again the Negroes of
northwest Jamaica, impatient because of the slow progress of the
emancipation, arose in revolt and destroyed nearly three and a half
million dollars' worth of property, well-nigh ruining the planters there.
The next year two hundred and fifty-five thousand slaves were set free,
for which the planters were paid nearly thirty million dollars. There
ensued a discouraging condition of industry. The white officials sent out
in these days were arbitrary and corrupt. Little was done for the mass of
the people and there was outrageous over-taxation. Nevertheless the
backwardness of the colony was attributed to the Negro. Governor Eyre
complained in 1865 that the young and strong were good for nothing and
were filling the jails; but a simultaneous report by a missionary told the
truth concerning the officials. This aroused the colored people, and a
mulatto, George William Gordon, called a meeting. Other meetings were
afterward held, and finally the Negro peasantry began a riot in 1861, in
which eighteen people were killed, only a few of whom were white.

The result was that Governor Eyre tried and executed by