When that eccentric individual, Capt. John Gabriel Stedman, resigned hiscommission in the English Navy, took the oath of abjuration, and wasappointed ensign in the Scots brigade employed for two centuries byHolland, he little knew that "their High Mightinesses the States of theUnited Provinces" would send him out, within a year, to the forests ofGuiana, to subdue rebel negroes. He never imagined that the year 1773would behold him beneath the rainy season in a tropical country, wadingthrough marshes and splashing through lakes, exploring with his feet forsubmerged paths, commanding impracticable troops, and commanded by aninsufferable colonel, feeding on greegree worms and fed upon bymosquitos, howled at by jaguars, hissed at by serpents, and shot at bythose exceedingly unattainable gentlemen, "still longed for, never seen,"the Maroons of Surinam.