of extreme brevity and
blackness, whose full-length portrait can hardly be said to adorn
Dallas's History; but he was as formidable a guerrilla as Marion. Under
his leadership, the various bodies of fugitives were consolidated into
one force and thoroughly organized. Cudjoe, like Schamyl, was religious
as well as military head of his people; by Obeah influence he
established a thorough freemasonry among both slaves and insurgents; no
party could be sent forth by the government but he knew it in time to
lay an ambush, or descend with fire and sword on the region left
unprotected. He was thus always supplied with arms and ammunition; and
as his men were perfect marksmen, never wasted a shot and never risked a
battle, his forces naturally increased while those of his opponents were
decimated. His men were never captured, and never took a prisoner; it
was impossible to tell when they were defeated; in dealing with them, as
Pelissier said of the Arabs, "peace was not purchased by victory"; and
the only men who could obtain the slightest advantage against them were
the imported Mosquito Indians, or the "Black Shot," a company of
government negroes. For nine full years this particular war continued
unchecked, General Williamson ruling Jamaica by day and Cudjoe by night.

The rebels had every topographical advantage, for they held possession
of the "Cockpits." Those highlands are furrowed through and through, as
by an earthquake, with a series of gaps or ravines, resembling the
California canons, or those similar fissures in various parts of the
Atlantic States, known to local fame either poetically as ice-glens, or
symbolically as purgatories. These chasms vary from two hundred yards to
a mile in length; the rocky walls are fifty or a hundred feet high, and
often absolutely inaccessible, while the passes at each end admit but
one man at a time. They are thickly wooded, wherever trees can grow;
water flows within them; and they often communicate with one another,
forming a series of traps for an invading force. Tired and thirsty with
climbing, the weary soldiers toil on, in single file, without seeing or
hearing an enemy; up the steep and winding path they traverse one
"cockpit," then enter another. Suddenly a shot is fired from the dense
and sloping forest on the right, then another and another, each dropping
its man; the startled troops face hastily in that direction, when a more
murderous volley is poured from the other side;