342 HISTORY OF [BOOK n. 



roons were repulsed, and forced to take shelter in the 

 woods, but the militia did not think fit to pursue 

 them. Some rumours of this skirmish reached Spa- 

 nish Town, which is distant from the spot about thir- 

 ty miles 3 and, as all the circumstances were not 

 known, the inhabitants wers thrown into the most 

 dreadful alarm, from apprehensions that the Maroons 

 had defeated Charlton, and were in full march to at- 

 tack the town. Ayscough, then commander in chief, 

 participating in the general panic, ordered the trum- 

 pets to sound, the drums to beat, and in a few hours 

 collected a body of horse and foot, who went to meet 

 the enemy. On the second day after their depar- 

 ture, they came to a place where, by the fires which 

 remained unextinguished, they supposed the Maroons 

 had lodged the preceding night. They therefore fol- 

 lowed the track, and socn after got sight of them. 

 Captain Edmunds, who commanded the detachment, 

 disposed his men for action; but the Maroons decli- 

 ned engaging, and fled different ways. Several of 

 them, however, were slain in the pursuit, and others 

 made prisoners. These two victories reduced their 

 strength, and filled them with so much terror, that 

 they never afterwards appeared in any considerable 

 body, nor dared to make any stand; indeed, from the 

 commencement of the war till this period, they had 

 not once ventured a pitched battle, but skulked about 

 the skirts of remote plantations, surprising stragglers, 

 and murdering the whites by two or three at a time, 

 or when they were too few to make any resistance. 

 By night they seized the favourable opportunity that 

 darkness gave them, of stealing into the settlements, 

 where they set fire to cane-fields and out-houses, kill- 



