HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
77 
dance beneath the shelter of a rock, to the mournful sound of a gourd filled with 
peas. 
The discontented Negroes generally fly for refuge into the woods, where they are 
pursued by detachments of soldiers: when they are taken, they are punished with 
great seventy; and the third offence of this kind is followed by death. 
Religion is, indeed, sometimes employed to alleviate the evils of their situation. 
Some of them are occasionally baptised: they are then told that they are become 
the brethren of the white people, and that they will go into paradise; but it is not 
an easy matter to persuade them, that the Europeans will ever prove their guides 
to heaven., 
It is not for us to discuss, in this place, the subject of slavery, on which very 
able writers have differed, and with which volumes have been filled. That disci¬ 
pline, and sometimes a severe one, may be necessary in the management of planta¬ 
tions, cannot be denied, and that the owners sometimes exercise their power with 
unnecessary rigour, must also be acknowledged; at the same time it would be ridi¬ 
culous to assert that, because a white man is the master of a plantation, he must be 
cruel, and because a black man is a slave, he must be wretched. We shall conclude 
this subject with some remarks of the late Admiral Kempenfelt, made by him in the 
year 1758. 
“ The slaves of Madagascar are the most inclined to desert from their masters. 
Many of them, incited by the love of liberty, have retired into the mostinaccessible 
woods and mountains, and, forming themselves into bodies, attack the plantations in 
which they have been slaves. The mischief they occasion is sometimes very destruc¬ 
tive, both to the plantations, as well as to those who inhabit them. When they are 
impelled by hunger, neither domestic or wild animal, not even the monkies escape 
them. .They also make a kind of short spear or javelin, which they throw to a con¬ 
siderable distance, and with great dexterity. Many, on their desertion, have put 
out to sea in canoes which they have stolen, and have trusted to the mercy of the 
waves, in order to regain their native island of Madagascar; and it is known that 
some of them, by the force of the currents, and the favour of the winds, which gene¬ 
rally blow that way, have arrived there, having been recognized by French people 
who had seen them at Mauritius. 
“ Many of the black Maroons have been taken and destroyed by the detachments 
of troops that are sent after them; they are still, however, numerous, and from the 
