In reading these lines, one cannot help from remembering the classical description Alexander Von Humboldt gives of the Negro boatmen of the river Dagua, in the actual republic of Colombia.  The inimitable skill and unsurpassable bravery Humboldt saw them display in the midst of the ferocious currents and loud-pouring rapids of that river caused him to exclaim:  “Every movement of the paddle is a wonder, and every Negro a god!” A nice monument to the fame of indomitable bravery the Negroes manifested in past times in Guatemala exists still in a saying often heard by travelers:  “Esos son negros!” or “Those are Negroes,” an exclamation which means:  “Those are desperate men, who do not care for anything.”  One could also hear the saying:  “Esto es obra de negros,” or “that is a work of Negroes,” the meaning being that it was work for bold men with iron nerves.

Another expression brings out the fact that the Negroes were considered, or forced to be, very hard workers. “Trabaja como un negro” or “he works like a Negro,” signified doing “the most arduous labor.”  That the lot of the slaves was often a bitter one, though, because of the less greedy Spanish character, without doubt generally a less hard one than in North America, is shown by the fact that Guatemala had her “Cimarrones” just as Jamaica, and Guiana, had their Maroons.

The Spanish word “cimarron” signifies indiscriminately a runaway head of cattle or horses, that had become wild, or a runaway slave.  The fugitive Negroes of Guatemala had their chief stronghold in the inaccessible mountain woods of the Sierra de las Minas, which lies near the Atlantic coast between the Golfo Dulce and the valley of the river Motagua.  The Golfo Dulce, which is now abandoned because of lack of sufficient depth for the big vessels of to-day, was at that time the port of entry for the whole of Guatemala.  From it a bridle-path ran over the Sierra de las Minas to the valley of the Motagua and further on to the capital.  In speaking of this path over the mountain, Gage remarks:  “What the Spaniards fear most until they get out of these mountains, are two or three hundred Negroes, Cimarrones, who for the bad treatment they received have fled from Guatemala and from other places, running away from their masters in order to resort to these woods; there they live with their wives and children and increase in numbers every year, so that the entire force of Guatemala City and its environments is not capable to subdue them.”

They very often came out of the woods to attack those who drove teams of mules, and took from them wine, salt, clothes and arms to the quantity they needed.  They never did any harm to the mule drivers nor to their slaves.  On the contrary, the slaves amused themselves with the Cimarrones, because they were of the same color and in the same condition of servitude, and not seldom availed themselves of the opportunity to follow their example, and united with them to obtain liberty, though obliged to live in the woods and mountains.