A MIDNIGHT MARCH. 153 
down in small baskets made of tough roots. A small 
cold stream flowed near by; and thus this rich-poor 
man had, with the game of the forest, everything he 
wanted right at hand. 
Returning to the cabin, my attention was called to 
the logs of which its walls were built. They were 
solid rosewood, which once grew wild in these for- 
ests. Could they have been transported to the coast, 
they would have brought a good price. The cabin was 
one of those built by some of the Maroons, or runaway 
slaves, some forty years ago, when they escaped to 
the mountains and formed so formidable a body that 
troops were required several years to capture and 
subdue them. The space we were in was shaped 
like the bottom of a shallow bowl, surrounded by high 
hills, the dry crater, probably, of an extinct volcano. 
There were many evidences of the residence of the 
runaways, in dismantled cabins, and gardens, and 
fruit-trees. It is thought that the wild hogs roaming 
about the surrounding hills were from their stock. 
We were much puzzled to account for the mys- 
terious visits the old man paid now and then to a 
gloomy gorge, into which he would not allow us to 
penetrate. My boys related the story, prevalent some 
ten years previously, that the old man had a lovely 
grand-daughter, only survivor of the family he took 
with him to the woods. They thought she must be, 
at the present time, about thirty years old; and they 
described her as being as beautiful as the old man 
was ugly, which was saying a good deal. But we 
did not at that me see this fair Carib, nor did we 
even obtain conclusive proof of her existence. There 
was, however, much in the old man’s behavior that 
