Anyhow, there was trouble with the superintendent, a white man whom the Maroons liked and trusted, but who apparently was so slack he was away from his post for weeks at a time, and the Government suspended him and placed another man in his place. Then two Maroons, whom the Maroons openly said they counted of little worth, stole some hogs, and were apprehended and taken to Montego Bay and given thirty-nine lashes by--and there lay the sting for the unconquered Maroons--a common slave in the workhouse. This was strongly resented and the Maroons threw out their new superintendent, and we can imagine the excitement and dismay in Montego Bay when the dismissed man came riding down the mountains. The inhabitants doubtless looked with relief upon the grey stone walls of the fort that overlooked the bay, and took care to have in order those stout stone houses with walls over two feet thick. I have lived in one of them. Those walls certainly would have been a protection against a savage foe. The militia were called out and moved forward into the woods. So small is the island, so close they were, that Maroon Town can only have been about seventeen miles from Montego Bay, even taking into account all the hairpin-turns, and it was nothing like that as the crow flies. It can hardly have been pleasant to have a band of bloodthirsty savages so close, and here the sycophant Bridges, who for some reason does not spare Lord Balcarres, the new Governor of the island, and blamed him for the second Maroon war, becomes quite poetical on the subject of the meeting of the militia with the enemy. “The militia,” he says, “moved forward to the supposed scene of action and were met in the woods by a Maroon of exquisite symmetry and noble address, who descended the side of the mountain with the step of an antelope, and giving a wild and graceful flourish to his lance presented a letter requesting a conference with the chief magistrate of the district and with certain other individuals whom it named. The proposal was accepted and their terms heard.”