Some of us were, I suppose, but the vast majority grew accustomed to the alarms. So few people were killed even if they came every night, so few houses were wrecked though the night sky was illuminated with search-lights that we became inured to them. And so I suppose it was with these people who lived on the borders of the Maroon Country. The pens and estates close to the mountains were their homes. Here they must live, and they hoped that the raiding Maroons would not come their way, that their slaves would stand by them, and that they would be able to beat them off if they did; that anyhow, if the worst came to the worst, help would come to extricate them before the savages were able to work their wicked will upon them. Still, of course, the Maroons must have retarded the settlement of the country as Dallas says they undoubtedly did. “By degrees they became very formidable, and in their predatory excursions greatly distressed the back settlers by plundering their houses, destroying their cattle, and carrying off their slaves by force.” “At first,” says Dallas, “they contented themselves with isolated cases of depredation, but growing bolder, became such a danger that the colonists resolved to reduce them.” “Isolated cases of depredation” are very hard on those isolated cases. But when raids like this have been repeated twice or thrice, then even the colonist who did not come into contact with the Maroons realised that something must be done. The Maroons concentrated themselves under Cudjoe, whom we read was “a bold, skilful, and enterprising man,” who, on assuming the command, appointed his brothers Accompong and Johnny leaders under him, and Cuffee and Quao subordinate captains. Many of these negroes seem to have been Koromantyns, runaway slaves, whom Dallas describes as “a people inured to war on the coast of Africa.” Ashantis all I doubt not. Cudjoe had a great reputation. From the Maroons in the Eastern Mountains a body calling themselves Cottawoods broke away, and with their women and children joined Cudjoe by the rugged, inaccessible mountain paths and valleys, and Dallas tells of another body of black men who also cast in their lot with him.