36 TlMEHRI. 
for imposing upon me so grateful a task that she wished ' to get 
them a good flogging' ... It was not even contended that any 
specific fault had been committed to justify the punishment, but this was 
to be invented, and merely because some idle whim, some fit of caprice 
or ill humour, had led the mistress of these poor slaves to wish them 
' a good flogging'." 
The feeling of the slaves toward their masters is 
equally worthy of consideration. If the white owner in 
those days had not as yet recognised any possible right 
of the negroes to freedom, the latter were at least equally 
ignorant and far from claiming such rights. If the bear- 
ing of the slave owners toward their slaves was cruel, the 
latter bore it as long as they could and then fled into the 
forest, where, banded together under the name of 'bush- 
negroes,' they lived a life of danger and great hardship, 
and were, as will presently be told, a constant source of 
danger to the colonists. On the other hand, kindness 
on the part of the owner had the effect of attaching his 
slaves to him with a bond of marvellous strength. We 
have already seen one case in which almost patriarchal 
kindness on the part of the master resulted in an almost 
idyllic state of happiness, content, and gratitude on the 
part of the slaves. Such cases were, however, not very 
common. But, very much more often, that lesser degree 
of kindness on the part of the master which ordinary hu- 
manity enjoined sufficed to win an almost doglike attach- 
ment from the slaves. One story from among several 
told by PlNCKARD must serve to illustrate the matter. 
At that time French privateers, manned by ardent re- 
publicans of the period, used to cruise off the coast of 
Guiana ; and on one occasion, one of these ships having 
captured two small trading vessels belonging to the plan- 
ters on shore, and manned by their slaves, three or four 
