The Three Counties under the Dutch. 17 
England. The military arrangements were to be made 
by the conquerors ; but all civil matters were to 
proceed as before and according to their established 
forms. Such of the Dutch troops as chose were to 
enlist under the new rulers, a privilege of which many 
seem to have availed themselves. The Dutch governor 
and officials were not to be removed from their posts. 
All private property was to remain with its previous 
owners ; but public property was confiscated to the use 
of the conquerors. 
The terms were so easy, and even so pleasant, to the 
settlers in the colony of Demerara, that within a fort- 
night the neighbouring colony of Berbice, being offered 
similar terms, accepted these without hesitation. 
Almost the only recorded instance of even individual 
resistance to the surrender was, not by a Dutchman, 
but by a French captain of a privateer, which happened 
to be lying in the harbour. This captain, a most furious 
republican of the Great Republic, was so resolved not to 
strike his flag to the " tyrant-English" that, unable to 
make his escape by any other means, he ran his 
ship some distance up the river and there scuttled 
her, and, having fastened a bottle containing a scurri- 
lous and abusive letter to the mast head, which 
remained above water, fled into the forest where, as was 
natural, he perished. 
The whole of that which is now British Guiana was in 
the hands of the English. Its boundaries, though, as wv. 
natural under the circumstances, no special attention wa. 
given to these details, were of course the same as had 
been those of the Dutch colonies of Demerara, including 
Essequibo on the west and of Berbice on the east, 
C 
