12 ,Sf^iY JOSEF. 



a slave to tlie State : but these recruits were enlisted shortly 

 after a numher of their recently imported countrymen were 

 wandering freely over the country, working either as free 

 labourers, or settling, to use an apt American phrase, as 

 squatters ; and to assert that the recruit, while under military 

 probation, is better off than the free Trinidad labourer, w^ho 

 goes where he lists and earns as much in one day as will keep 

 him for three days, is an absurdity. Accordingly we find 

 that Lieutenant-Colonel Bush, who commanded the 1st AVest 

 India Regiment, thought that the mutiny was mainly owing 

 to the ill-advice of their civil, or, we should rather say, un- 

 military countrymen. This, to a certain degree, was the 

 fact : but, by the declaration of Daaga and many of his 

 countrymen, it is evident the seeds of mutiny were sown on 

 the passage from Africa. 



" It has been asserted that the recruits were driven to mu- 

 tiny by hard treatment of their commanding officers. There 

 seems not the slightest truth in this assertion ; they were 

 treated with fully as much kindness as their situation would 

 admit of, and their chief was peculiarly a favourite of Colonel 

 Bush and the officers, notwithstanding Daaga's violent and 

 ferocious temper often caused complaints to be brought 

 against him. 



" A correspondent of the Naval and Military Gazette was 

 under an apprehension that the mutineers would be joined by 



