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"Being now about to enter the town [after a shooting battle with the European soldiers invading the Maroon village], a rebel captain . . . bearing in his hand a torch of flaming straw, seeing their ruin inevitable, had the resolution to stay and set the town on fire in our presence, which, by the dryness of the houses, instantly produced a general conflagration, when the firing from the woods began gradually to cease. This bold and masterly maneuver not only prevented that carnage to which the common soldiers in the heat of victory are but too prone, but also afforded the enemy an opportunity of retreating with their wives and children, and carrying off their most useful effects; whilst our pursuit, and seizing the spoil, were at once frustrated both by the ascending flames, and the unfathomable marsh, which we soon discovered on all sides to surround us."

- Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas, edited by Richard Price (1973), Chapter Seventeen: Guerrilla Warfare: A European Soldiers View