304 THE BLACK CARIBS. 



Mandingo that, on his paying him 350 dollars, he would duly 

 emancipate him. 



This generous offer Alustapha embraced with tears of gratitude ; he 

 had been free in Africa, and was one of the few West India slaves 

 capable of appreciating the real blessing of liberty. During the ar- 

 rangement of the necessary documents the negro made no audible 

 declaration of his sentiments ; but his eloquent countenance ex- 

 pressed eternal gratitude. 



The inhabitants of St. Vincent's were, about that time, expecting 

 to be engaged in a contest with a race of Indians inhabiting the 

 island, called the " Black Caribs/' a fierce and treacherous people. 

 Intelligence had been received that the heads of the tribe had been 

 negotiating with an abandoned miscreant from St. Domingo, named 

 Victor Hugues, a bloody emissary from the French Convention, 

 which was then in full force at Paris. 



Victor Hugues had formerly been a baker at Marseilles, and had 

 risen to his present rank by his peculiar talents and ferocity, scarcely 

 to be paralleled, and certainly not exceeded, by anything the san- 

 guinary French revolution produced. He was well acquainted with 

 the West Indies, and was, therefore, chosen by the Convention to 

 stir up the slaves of the Colonies to rebellion, and lead on brigands 

 to massacre. He had already too well succeeded in his mission, 

 and was then sending his agents of blood amongst the Black Caribs. 

 These barbarians (although they were uniformly treated with the 

 greatest kindness by the English) were but too prone to listen to in- 

 flammatory proposals ; so that the colonists were hourly expecting a 

 war, similar to that which desolated St. Domingo. 



The Black Caribs differ from every kind of Indian on these islands, 

 or on the main. Of their origin nothing is known ; but they evi- 

 dently are not genuine Indians. They have precisely the appearance 

 of what the Spaniards call Zambaigos ; that is, the mixed race be- 

 tween the Indian and the negro ; it is therefore conjectured that 

 their progenitors were the red, or real Caribs, and some cargo of 

 negroes shipwrecked off the island, or some of the Granadines. At 

 what time this intermixture took place there is no record ; nor have 

 these people preserved the slightest tradition of their origin ; nothing 

 can be traced in their superstition which resembles that of Africa, 

 yet they are distinct in form, features, and manners from any of the 

 aborigines of this New World, and bear decided marks of being 

 Zambaigos. 



The war, as they expected, soon broke out, and was conducted 

 by the savages and their Gallic abettors with a fiendish cruelty, the 

 details of which make humanity shudder. 



One night, during the height of those hostilities, Belgrave arrived 

 at the mansion of a plantation on the fertile plain, beneath the souf- 

 friere,* which was at this time remote from the main scene of war. 

 He rushed into the hall, bearing an infant of one year old in his arms ; 

 across his forehead was a deep gash, recently inflicted with a sword, 



* This word is a general name for a volcanic mountain in the West Indies ; 

 those of St. Lucia and Guadeloupe bear the same appellation. 



