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He never imagined that the year 1773 would behold him beneath the rainy season in a tropical country, wading through marshes and splashing through lakes, exploring with his feet for submerged paths, commanding impracticable troops, and commanded by an insufferable colonel, feeding on greegree worms and fed upon by mosquitos, howled at by jaguars, hissed at by serpents, and shot at by those exceedingly unattainable gentlemen, "still longed for, never seen," the Maroons of Surinam.
Oroonoko made his way down to the seashore, and was there allured, under false pretenses of hospitality, on board an English ship. He was carried to the West Indies, and sold to a planter of Surinam, the colony in which Mrs. Behn was living, and where by a remarkable chance Imoinda had already been sold.
Said Candide to Cacambo: "My friend, you see how perishable are the riches of this world; there is nothing solid but virtue, and the happiness of seeing Cunegonde once more." "I grant all you say," said Cacambo, "but we have still two sheep remaining, with more treasure than the King of Spain will ever have; and I see a town which I take to be Surinam, belonging to the Dutch.
Portsmouth and Newburyport ruled the trade with Martinique, Guadaloupe, and Porto Rico, sending out fish and bringing back sugar; Gloucester bargained with the West Indies for rum, and brought coffee and dye-stuffs from Surinam; Marblehead had the Bilboa business; and Salem, most opulent of all, usurped the Sumatra, African, East Indian, Brazilian, and Cayenne commerce.
Its colonies on the Guiana coast, Surinam, Berbice and Essequibo were at the end of the 17th century in an impoverished condition, but already beginning to develop the sugar plantations which were shortly to become a lucrative industry; and the island of Curaçoa had the unenviable distinction of being for some years one of the chief centres of the negro slave trade.
The honor of the flag was yielded by the Dutch in the most extensive terms: a regulation of trade was agreed to: all possessions were restored to the same condition as before the war: the English planters in Surinam were allowed to remove at pleasure: and the states agreed to pay to the king the sum of eight hundred thousand patacoons, near three hundred thousand pounds.
Two years ago he was exiled, for some time, to an estate of his in Touraine, and Bonaparte even deliberated about transporting him to Cayenne, when Talleyrand observed "that such a condemnation would endanger that colony of France, as he would certainly organize there a focus of revolutions, which might also involve Surinam and the Brazils, the colonies of our allies, in one common ruin.
"Nelson will have been first to Surinam, thence to Trinidad, and from that to Barbadoes," wrote he on the 28th of June to Admiral Decres; "he will lose two days at Cape Verd; he will lose much time in collecting his ships, on account of the vessels and frigates to which he will give chase on his way.
The actual condition of the British colonies since emancipation is perfectly well known in Surinam: three of them, Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice, being its immediate neighbors, whatever evils and inconveniences have resuited from emancipation must be well understood by the Dutch slave-holders; yet we find them looking towards emancipation as the only prospect of remedy for the greater evils of their own system.
He seated himself on it and it groaned under his weight. "Whew!" he whistled. "Never made to stand rough weather, was it? Well, AIN'T you glad?" Keziah looked at him gravely. "You know I'm glad, Nat," she said. "So? I hoped you would be, but I did want to hear you say it. Now you come to anchor yourself and let's have a talk. I've been countin' on it ever since we set tops'ls off Surinam."
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