[BRYMNER] THE JAMAICA MAROONS 89 
commissaries, or whether he first suggested the movement, is not clear, 
but in the month of April, 1797, Ochterlony presented to Wentworth his 
scheme for embodying the Maroons as a regiment, himself to be colonel, 
to be transferred to the Cape of Good Hope. The plan was not regarded 
in a favourable light by Wentworth, who represented to the Secretary of 
State that the regiment would be encumbered with a train of women and 
children double the number of the men, and to turn such a body of men 
loose at the Cape with arms in their hands would be dangerous to the 
community. The safest place for them, he maintained, was Nova Scotia, 
where they could do no mischief nor mix with people who could corrupt 
them. He charged Ochterlony with being actuated by interested motives, 
hoping to make a fortune as colonel. The scheme was defeated, and 
Octherlony was dismissed from his office, on the charge of causing seri- 
ous losses to Jamaica by his mismanagement. The Maroons were then 
placed in charge of Capt. Howe, under whom they are reported to have 
made satisfactory progress, but that they made any real progress is 
exceedingly doubtful, for although a favourable report is made of the 
children at school, the men, it is complained, would do no work, hoping 
to be kept in idleness, a fact not to be wondered at, considering that 
whilst in Jamaica they did absolutely nothing but amuse themselves. 
The number who left Jamaica and landed at Halifax is nowhere 
clearly stated. ‘‘ About” 600 are said to have been on board the trans- 
ports on leaving Port Royal, but this can have been only an approximate 
estimate. The first enumeration reported is that made by the surgeon, 
Oxley, on Ist July, 1797, who vives the total as 526, increased Ist August 
to 532, and on Ist September to 543, both increases being due to births. 
But that these must have been more numerous seems evident, as one death 
is noted and there were probably more, so that there must have been 
births to counterbalance the losses by death. 
Early in 1799 Wentworth complained of intrigues to foment discon- 
tent among the Maroons, who but for these would have been happy and 
contented, yet in the same despatch he reports that they are determined 
to get back to Jamaica— two statements which it is not easy to reconcile. 
In 1796, before the Maroons had been sent to Nova Scotia, a corre- 
spondence had been opened by the Secretary of State with the African 
Company on a proposal to send them to Sierra Leone. But the experi- 
ence of the company with the negroes who had fled from the United 
States during the war ending in 1783 and taken refuge in Nova Scotia, 
from which they were removed in 1792, led the directors to refuse to 
entertain the idea of dealing with another body of negroes whose reputa- 
tion could not be held to warrant such a step. The conduct of the first 
body of negroes had been turbulent and mutinous, causing great anxiety 
and expense to the company, and not unnaturally the directors dreaded 
that the Maroons would make common cause with their brethren in 
