Part 33

## action was right.

Parkinson was one of the last to surrender, about three months after the date fixed. He and Palmer, who had both surrendered on August 11, 1795, had been sent to the Maroons to try and persuade them to come in. Instead, they had rejoined their companies. That General Walpole had a high opinion of them as leaders is evident. He says in a letter to Lord Balcarres, “If Palmer or Parkinson should refuse the terms, which I think they will, you will never conquer them.”

In addition to the regular foot soldiers and militia employed, the 13th, 14th, 17th, 18th and 20th Light Dragoons and the York Hussars, as we have seen, took part in the struggle, and =Horse-guards= in St. James’s probably owes its name to their having been quartered there. Of the Dragoons, the 20th (or Jamaica) were raised in the West Indies. On the whole about 1520 chosen European troops, aided by twice that number of colonial militia, were opposed to less than three hundred undisciplined Maroons, who were, however, physically brave men, and fighting under conditions very favourable to themselves and most unfavourable to their adversaries. They had a system of horn-signals so perfect that there was a distinct call by which every individual man could be hailed. The cost of the war was about £350,000 sterling. In addition £49,400 was voted to defray the expatriation expenses.

Under date December 22, 1795, General Walpole wrote to Lord Balcarres as follows:

I have the honour to enclose to your Lordship the proposals of the Maroons to which I have acceded.

The whole detachment behaved to their credit. I must not omit to mention to your Lordship, that to the impression made in the action by the undaunted bravery of the 17th Dragoons who were more particularly engaged on the 15th, we owe the submission of the rebels: The Maroons speak of them with astonishment. Mr. Werge was particularly signalized with the advance guard; and the sergeant-major of that regiment is strongly recommended, for his spirit and activity, by the commanding officer Mr. Edwards, who is every way deserving your Lordship’s good opinion.

On February 11, 1796, General Walpole wrote to Lord Balcarres as follows:—

... I am preparing to move the 13th Dragoons through the cockpits, from One-Eye.

On February 20 Lord Balcarres wrote to General Walpole:

... I think it will take a considerable force to guard the Maroon prisoners. The 17th Light Dragoons and the 62nd Regiment may occupy Montego-Bay, Falmouth and St. Ann’s.

The 17th are to hold themselves in readiness to embark for St. Domingo, when they send shipping to receive them; of which no requisition is as yet made.

I should be glad to know your wish as to the quartering of the 13th Light Dragoons on their arrival.

The 14th regiment of Light Dragoons are not to remain in this country if quiet is restored. If, however, the banditti of runaway slaves have gone down to Old Woman Savanna, they must occupy posts in that neighbourhood; the country that lies behind it I believe never was explored.

The “XX (or Jamaica) Regiment of Light Dragoons” was formed in 1792 and is last mentioned in the year 1802, when it was transferred to the English establishment.

Major-Gen. Robert R. Gillespie, who was one of the first lieutenants appointed when the regiment was raised in 1792, entered the army in 1783. When in the following year the French planters in San Domingo applied to Jamaica for aid, he volunteered for service with the infantry, and in the campaign there distinguished himself for bravery, returning home at the fall of Port-au-Prince. On being appointed in 1795 major of brigade to General Wilford, he accompanied him to San Domingo, and soon afterwards, though small in stature, killed six men single handed. Returning to Jamaica, he assumed command of the regiment, and in 1799 was recommended by the lieutenant-governor and House of Assembly for the rank of lieutenant-colonel and was so gazetted. He was offered by Lord Hugh Seymour the military command at Curaçoa; but Lord Balcarres said he could not spare him. At the Peace of Amiens in 1802, when the 20th Light Dragoons were transferred to the English establishment, Gillespie returned home in command, and the House of Assembly, glad to be rid of the regiment, voted one hundred pounds for a sword of honour for him. He subsequently had a brilliant career in the East, and in 1812 he received the thanks of the commander-in-chief in India, Sir George Nugent, for services in connection with the Palimbang expedition.

With regard to the unfairness to them in expatriating them, it is only just to those who did it to add that those few Maroons to whom was offered liberty to stay in Jamaica elected to go with the rest, on the grounds that “they feared they could never live in security and quiet with the free people of colour and negroes in this island.” Balcarres was severely attacked in England for the use he made of the dogs from Cuba; but he, it would seem, fully justified his action in that matter.

On June 6, 1796, the Maroons left Port Royal in three ships with the 96th Regiment as guard, and under convoy of H.M.S. _Africa_. The arrival of the exiles in Halifax is thus described in “Maroons of Jamaica and Nova Scotia, by J. C. Hamilton, LL.B.” in “Proceedings of the Canadian Institute, April 1890”: “Four years after this (_i.e._ in 1796) three ships entered the harbour of Halifax, laden with the most extraordinary cargoes that ever entered that port. Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, then in command at Halifax, boarded the _Dover_, was met by Colonel W. D. Quarrell, commissary-general of Jamaica, with whom Mr. Alexander Ouchterlony was associated, and a detachment of the 96th Regiment drawn up on board to receive him. Black men of good proportions, with many women and children, all in neat uniform attire, were mustered in lines. Other transports, the _Mary_ and _Anne_, were, his Highness was informed, about to follow, and the main cargo was six hundred Maroons exiled from Jamaica, with soldiers to guard them and meet any attacks from French vessels on the voyage.

“The Prince was struck with the fine appearance of the black men, but the citizens had heard of how Jamaica had been harried by its black banditti, and were unwilling at first to have them added to their population.”

They worked at the fortifications that were being erected to meet the threatened attack of the French fleet under Richery; and Maroon Hill, near Halifax, still bears their name. But the settlement of the Maroons in Nova Scotia was ill-conceived and ill-controlled, and they, being themselves unwilling to work, and both Jamaica and Nova Scotia unwilling to keep them in idleness, followed in 1800 those “loyal negroes” of the United States who had migrated first to Canada and then to Sierra Leone. In the transport _Asia_ 550 of them reached Sierra Leone, where, as no

## particular place could be secured for their location, efforts to obtain

an island having failed, they were allotted a place in Granville Town, under a superintendent, Lieutenant Odburn. The “Settlers’ Rising” was in progress when they arrived, and they assisted in quelling it.

Soon after the Trelawny Town Maroons were transported from Jamaica, barracks were erected on the site of their old town, and regiments of British troops were maintained there until the middle of the nineteenth century, when they were withdrawn at the time of the Crimean war. Trelawny Town was for a time the headquarters of the troops stationed in the county of Cornwall, but it later was superseded by Falmouth. The barracks at Trelawny Town have fallen into ruins, but the evidence of the residents in the neighbourhood of a number of white soldiers in the past exists in some of the peasantry there to-day.

In 1839 Maroon Town was made the site of a sanatorium for European troops, and huts were erected there for the purpose, and the 68th Regiment was stationed there.

On a visit made to the Cockpit country in 1905 by the present writer and a friend, on entering the neighbourhood of Trelawny Town, or Maroon Town as it is now called, we came across the remains of a block-house which had loopholed chambers at three corners and evidently had had an upper storey, now disappeared, for dwelling purposes. Being now in the heart of the Cockpit country we could study its formation in detail. At one time it gave the impression of a number of stunted cones rising from a plain; at another the feeling was one of a number of basins like the Devil’s Punch-bowls of England; at all times, except where there was a clearing for corn, bananas or bread-kind, it appeared thickly wooded—mahogany, cedar, mahoe, Santa Maria, and broadleaf being prominent; and mosquito wood and red shingle wood, and other lesser known woods, being pointed out by our guide. As the bridle path now runs at some distance from the rocks, which here and there crop out of the overhanging foliage and assume the form of solid masonry, tending to deceive one into thinking that one is in front of the ruin of some fort, it cannot be by it that the troops travelled when the Maroons hurled stones on them from above. As one rides along these defiles the mournful note of the solitaire, suggests the nervousness which might have fallen on the soldiers marching through a thickly wooded, rocky, unknown country, every crag of which might conceal a foe, to whose foot such mountain paths were familiar. At Maroon Town itself we found a clearing on which cattle were grazing, and a police station (just abandoned) built on the site of the officers’ quarters of half a century ago. Near by was the well which supplied the settlement with water, and a barracks, some 130 ft. long by 30 ft. broad, which had once possessed an upper storey of wood, little now remaining of the stoutly built lower walls of limestone quarried in the neighbourhood. There also were the powder-house and the cells, the hospital and the kitchens and the mess-house, which, placed on an immense rock open to the sea breeze from the east, commanded a view over Trelawny to the sea by Falmouth miles away. It was once a substantial building of three storeys, the solid steps leading up to the second floor being still usable. Opposite the mess-house rise two large conical hills calling to mind the twin Pitons of St. Lucia—the one called Gun Hill (because a gun had been placed in position there, possibly the howitzer with which Walpole did great execution), the other Garrison Hill. Then we saw the tank some thirty feet long, fed by a clear stream in which the soldiers were wont to bathe; then, saddest of all, a few tombs—one recalling the death in 1840 of a coloured sergeant of the 68th (or Durham) Regiment, another to the wife of a quartermaster of the 38th Regiment who died in 1846, and a third to the paymaster of the 101st Regiment who died in 1810; while a nameless tomb, the oldest inhabitant told us, belonged to a Colonel Skeate, who, being ill when his regiment left, was buried by the incoming regiment. The wood behind the police station was, we were told, almost impassable. For miles the thick woods lie untrodden by man, except when a few Maroons or other negroes go hunting the wild hogs which abound, or “fowling,” _i.e._ shooting pigeons.

After leaving Maroon Town we visited the chief settlement of the Maroons in the west end of the island, Accompong, and experienced rough travelling. In places there was nothing but the bare limestone rock for yards, without a scrap of earth. Nothing but a pony bred in the district could have negotiated it successfully. But once on the main path riding was easy. One was struck by the amount of cultivation on either hand; here and there a patch of bananas, here and there yams, and so on. On reaching the town of Accompong we saw a number of houses scattered about and a small church nearing completion. Across a “pit” stood the “Colonel’s” house on the opposite side. There was a schoolhouse, presided over by a teacher trained in the elementary school at Retirement hard by; but the Maroons apparently did not set much store by education, and only about a fourth of their children attended school.

The “Colonel’s” brother told us he knew more of their old language (Coromantyn) than any one else, but all we could get out of them was pig = bracho, bull = aboukani, cow = aboukress. From a philological point of view one views them with suspicion, although the late Major J. W. Powell, of the Bureau of Ethnology of the United States, assured the writer that when he visited these Maroons a year or two ago, he had discovered them talking their native language. Bryan Edwards tells us that in his day their language was “a barbarous dissonance of the African dialects with a mixture of Spanish and broken English.”

To the ordinary observer there is little or nothing to differentiate the Maroons from the ordinary “bush-negroes,” although they seem to possess more than an ordinary share of suspiciousness—a suspiciousness which was engendered by the treatment which their brothers of Trelawny Town received from Balcarres, and has been kept alive at odd times by subsequent actions. This curious group of people numbering about 800 dwelt, each family in its own house, in the centre of their 1200 acres, which they hold in common.

The following technical description of the Cockpit country, wherein Maroon Town and Accompong are situated, is taken from Mr. F. C. Nicholas’s paper on the subject in the “Journal of the Institute of Jamaica,” 1897.

A marked feature of the geology of the West Indies is found in the extensive deposits of massive white limestone common to all this part of the world. This formation, though hard and compact, disintegrates freely; tall cliffs and broken rocks are honeycombed with openings and pit-marks, presenting a rough jagged surface, which is sometimes almost impassable.

The Cockpit country where this formation is typical is situated in the west central part of Jamaica, and comprises an area some ten by fifteen miles in extent, and for the greater part one vast labyrinth of glades among rough cliffs, with here and there patches of smoother ground, and at other places, coming one after the other, a general collection of impassable sink-holes, called cockpits.

The impression one gets in first visiting this region is that it is of little interest; just a path between a few not very high cliffs. There is such a sameness about it all that one is constantly expecting the next turn to lead out into the open country, or to a cultivated estate. After a few hours’ hard scrambling one realises that here in truth there is a wilderness of rocks.

A large part of the Cockpit country has never been explored, nor is it probable that it ever will be, because the land is useless. One can cross the district from north to south, and east to west, and go all round it; sufficient to show that there is nothing to compensate for the effort, and that one part is quite similar to all the others. The elevations averaged from 1400 ft. to 1500 ft. In the glades I noted aneroid readings as low as 800 ft.; while on some of the ridges which cross this district N.E. and S.W., bending at times N. and S., I took readings as high as 2300 ft. These are the extremes, the average variation is about 200 ft.; but these elevations are abrupt and almost precipitous over nearly all the region.

In 1898 there arose, owing to a not unfrequent source, disputes about land, some slight trouble amongst the Maroons of Charles Town, which was, however, effectually suppressed by the prompt action of the general commanding the forces. It, however, gave to the late Phil Robinson, who was in the island at the time, an opportunity to write an article for the “Contemporary Review,” entitled “A Dress Rehearsal of Rebellion among the Maroons at Annotto Bay, Jamaica.”

In 1796 “The Proceedings of the Honourable House of Assembly relative to the Maroons; including the correspondence between the Right Honourable Earl Balcarres and the Honourable Major-General Walpole, during the Maroon rebellion; with the report of the Joint Special Secret Committee, to whom those papers were referred,” edited by Bryan Edwards, was published at St. Jago de la Vega; while in the same year was published in London “The Proceedings of the Governor and Assembly of Jamaica, in regard to the Maroon negroes: published by order of the Assembly. To which is prefixed an introductory account, containing observations on the disposition, character, manners, and habits of life, of the Maroons, and a detail of the origin, progress and termination of the late war between those people and the white inhabitants.” This was published in great measure as an answer to the attack made by Fox in the House of Commons on the action of the Assembly of Jamaica with regard to the Maroons. The same “Account of the Maroon Negroes in the Island of Jamaica” was included in Bryan Edwards’ “Historical Survey of the Island of St. Domingo,” published in 1801.

In the “Lives of the Lindsays,” published in 1858, is an account of “The Rise, Progress and Termination of the Maroon War.” Accounts of the Maroons will also be found in the histories of Long (to whom Edwards owns his indebtedness) and Bridges. The story of the Maroon War, from a military point of view, is told in the 7th chapter of the “History of the 17th Lancers,” by the Honourable J. W. Fortescue, and in a briefer form in the same writer’s “History of the British Army.” “The Maroon,” the work of the well-known novelist, Captain Mayne Reid (first published in 1862), described a sugar estate named “Welcome Hall” near Montego Bay, and a neighbouring pen, and the scene is laid entirely in St. James and Trelawny. The time is shortly anterior to the passing of the Emancipation Act in 1833, and the story, which incidentally imparts much information about local natural history and social life at the time, is, as might be expected from its author, full of exciting adventures.

In 1898 Lady Blake contributed an article on “The Maroons of Jamaica” to the “North American Review.”

The published accounts of the Maroon War are all more or less of a

## partisan spirit. Bryan Edwards holds a brief for the planters, Dallas

for the Maroons, the writer of the “Lives of the Lindsays” for Balcarres, and even Mr. Fortescue shows a slight partiality for Walpole.

An account of the cantonment of Maroon Town in 1848 is given in “Memorials of Captain Hedley Vicars, 97th Regiment,” 1881.

A brief account of the Maroons in Sierra Leone is given in “The Rise of British West Africa,” by Claude George (1904).

The wife of William Scarlett (the second), who has been alluded to in the chapter dealing with St. Andrew, had the Lecount estate in the parish of St. John, which she parted with to Francis Morgan, mariner, her brother-in-law, he being the husband of her sister Elizabeth. This William (the second) had a son William, baptized in St. Andrew’s parish church on January 17, 1711, but he is the only child so recorded. His (William the second) second son, James Scarlett, had estates in St. James, which by his will, proved in 1777, he left amongst his eleven children, and this James’s second son was the Robert Scarlett of =Duckett’s Spring=, alluded to above.

Robert Scarlett was born in 1737, probably in St. James. He died in 1798, and was buried in Montego Bay on March 18. He owned Duckett’s Spring, Success estate and Forest pen in St. James. Scarlett’s Hall (not far from Rose Hall and Palmyra) was a property of the family.

Elizabeth Anglin, daughter of Philip Anglin, of Paradise estate, was born on June 25, 1747, and married firstly one John Wright, a planter, who was killed in her presence by revolted slaves in 1763 or 1764, in the month of March, on the estate of a Mr. Griswold. In 1765 she married Robert Scarlett, of Duckett’s Spring, and had by him thirteen children, but only four sons and three daughters survived their father, the four sons being Philip Anglin Scarlett, custos and member of Assembly for Hanover from 1816 till his death in 1823; James Scarlett, “Silver-tongued Scarlett,” afterwards Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and first Lord Abinger; Robert Scarlett, M.D. of Edinburgh 1795, member of the Assembly for St. James in 1803–07, and later of the Council; and Sir William Anglin Scarlett. Elizabeth Anglin died in 1828 at Montego Bay, and was buried there on August 28.

Mary, daughter of John Lawrence, and wife of Philip Anglin, of Paradise estate, was the mother of the above mentioned Elizabeth. She was born in 1713 and died in 1797.

Philip Anglin Scarlett, member of the Assembly for Hanover, was the eldest son of Robert Scarlett, of Duckett’s Spring, and the owner of Cambridge estate, where the railway now runs on the way to Montego Bay, and near the road to Duckett’s.

William Anglin Scarlett was born on June 24, 1777. He died at Grove pen in Manchester on October 9, 1831, and lies buried at Mandeville. The following is the inscription on his tombstone: “Here rest the mortal remains of the Honourable Sir William Scarlett, Knight, ten years Chief Justice of Jamaica. He died October 9, 1831, aged 54. ‘The memory of the just is blessed.’” He married in July 1809 Mary, daughter of Joseph Williams, of Luana estate in the parish of St. Elizabeth; in that year he was member of the Assembly for St. James. He became chief justice of Jamaica in 1821. He was knighted in 1829. His widow survived him for one year, dying at Worthing in Sussex, England, in 1832. In 1823 he presided over the trial of Augustus Hardin Beaumont, the proprietor of a somewhat scandalous paper called “The Trifler,” first published in that year, for a libel on the Governor, the Duke of Manchester. The trial was the first to take place in the new court house, Kingston, which, wrecked by the earthquake of 1907, was only pulled down recently. The trial lasted for fourteen hours, finishing at 12.30 A.M., and ended in a verdict of “Not Guilty.” On leaving the court house the chief justice and attorney-general (Burge) were hissed and pelted with stones.

In the rebellion of 1831 the great house and works on both Cambridge and Duckett’s Spring were destroyed. On the former were 196 slaves, on the latter 221. At the time of Emancipation nine Scarletts owned properties in Hanover, Trelawny, St. James, St. Ann, St. Thomas-in-the-Vale and Kingston, with an aggregate of 327 slaves.

At Cambridge is still to be seen a family burial vault. At Duckett’s are the remains of the works and the great house. The latter was a square building of stone, with two loopholed circular towers at diagonally opposite corners. A similar arrangement is observable at The Cottage, on Cow Park, hard by in Westmoreland.