’This transaction caused in the breast of the savage a deep hatred against all white men—­a hatred so intense that he frequently, during and subsequent to the mutiny, declared he would eat the first white man he killed; yet this cannibal was made to swear allegiance to our Sovereign on the Holy Evangelists, and was then called a British soldier.

’On the voyage the vessel on board which Daaga had been entrapped was captured by the British.  He could not comprehend that his new captors liberated him:  he had been over reached and trepanned by one set of white men, and he naturally looked on his second captors as more successful rivals in the human, or rather inhuman, Guinea trade; therefore this event lessened not his hatred for white men in the abstract.

’I was informed by several of the Africans who came with him that when, during the voyage, they upbraided Daaga with being the cause of their capture, he pacified them by promising that when they should arrive in white man’s country, he would repay their perfidy by attacking them in the night.  He further promised that if the Paupaus and the Yarrabas would follow him, he would fight his way back to Guinea.  This account was fully corroborated by many of the mutineers, especially those who were shot with Daaga:  they all said the revolt never would have happened but for Donald Stewart, as he was called by the officers; but Africans who were not of his tribe called him Longa-longa, on account of his height.

’Such was this extraordinary man, who led the mutiny I am about to relate.

’A quantity of captured Africans having been brought hither from the islands of Grenada and Dominica, they were most imprudently induced to enlist as recruits in the 1st West India Regiment.  True it is, we have been told they did this voluntarily:  but, it may be asked, if they had any will in the matter, how could they understand the duties to be imposed on them by becoming soldiers, or how comprehend the nature of an oath of allegiance? without which they could not, legally speaking, be considered as soldiers.  I attended the whole of the trials of these men, and well know how difficult it was to make them comprehend any idea which was at all new to them by means of the best interpreters procurable.

’It has been said that by making those captured Negroes soldiers, a service was rendered them:  this I doubt.  Formerly it was most true that a soldier in a black regiment was better off than a slave; but certainly a free African in the West Indies now is infinitely in a better situation than a soldier, not only in a pecuniary point of view, but in almost every other respect.