The history of these Maroons is curious, and must be told at some length if the relation of the war is to be rightly understood. Jamaica was originally gained for the English by an expedition despatched by Cromwell in 1655; but it was not until 1658 that the Spaniards, after a last vain struggle to expel the British garrison, were finally driven from the island. On their departure their slaves fled to the mountains, and there for some years they lived by the massacre and plunder of British settlers. [Sidenote: 1795.] They seem to have scattered themselves over a large extent of country, and to have kept themselves in at least two distinct bodies, those in the north holding no communication with those in the south. These latter, in their district of Clarendon, being disagreeably near the seat of Government, the British authorities contrived to conciliate and disperse; but their fastnesses had not long been deserted by the Maroons when they were occupied (1690) by a band of revolted slaves. These last soon became extremely formidable and troublesome, their ravages compelling the planters to convert every estate-building into a fortress; and at last the burden of this brigandage became so insupportable that the Government determined to put it down with a strong hand. At the outset the attacks of the whites on these marauding gangs met with some success; but soon came a new departure. A man of genius arose from among these revolted slaves, one Cudjoe by name, by whose efforts the various wandering bands were welded into a single body, organised on a quasi-military footing, and made twice as formidable as before. Nor was this all. The Maroons of the north, who from the beginning had never left their strongholds nor ceased their depredations, heard the fame of Cudjoe, joined him in large numbers, and enlisted under his banner. Yet another tribe of negroes, distinct in race from both the others, likewise flocked to him; and the whole mass thus united by his genius grew, about the year 1730, to be comprehended, though inaccurately, by the whites under the name of Maroons (hog-hunters). Cudjoe now introduced a very skilful and successful system of warfare, which became traditional among all Maroon chiefs. The grand object was to take up a central position in a “cockpit,” _i.e._ a glen enclosed by perpendicular rocks, and accessible only through a narrow defile. A chain of such cockpits runs through the mountains from east to west, communicating by more or less practicable passes one with another. These glens run also in parallel lines from north to south, but the sides are so steep as to be impassable to any but a Maroon. [Sidenote: 1795.] Such were the natural fortresses of these black mountaineers, in a country known to none but themselves. To preserve communication among themselves they had contrived a system of horn-signals so perfect that there was a distinct call by which every individual man could be hailed and summoned. The outlets from these