This is New Amesterdam (Guyana), where the Berbice enters the sea. Here is a great, blank estuary, the colour of sharpened knives. I remember thinking how bright it seemed, and how the only shapes were two straggly lines of attenuating mangrove. Out in the glare nothing moved except dolphins, forming soundless hoops of pink and grey, before vanishing in rings. It looked like a film at the end of its spool. The blankness was compelling, as if anything could happen. This, it seemed, would have been the perfect place to watch the great slave revolt of 1763-4 in its final throes ... Here is my account of how it ended (as set out in 'Wild Coast'):
"It wasn’t long before the ships were returning down the estuary, loaded with captives. Over the next three months, some 2,600 slaves were re-captured. Atta [the leader of the revolt] held out until 14 April 1764, having wandered around like a hunted animal. In the end, he was betrayed by his old lieutenants, Okera and Gowsary. It’s said that they laughed as he was tied up over a fire. The Dutch then ordered that Atta’s flesh be torn away with red-hot pincers. For four hours Atta endured this until he eventually died. Observers say that throughout the ordeal, he hardly uttered a sound. Having been tortured most of his adult life, he was, it seems, impervious to pain.
Far upriver, the revolt fizzled on until the end of the year. The last to give up were the Angolans. Some 200 of them had established a tiny, nightmarish state, viciously defended by mantraps of sharpened bamboo. Inside, it was like Angola in miniature. Cannibalism was the source of all power, and there was a militia than ran on discipline and magic. The leader of this gruesome dystopia was Accabre, a witchdoctor from the Imbangala tribe. They believed that their women should not give birth but that the tribe should expand through abduction and theft. To join, all a man had to do was to kill an enemy and eat his flesh.
Accabre’s men would have eaten their way across Berbice if they hadn’t been betrayed. Soon they too were in chains. It was a terrible end to a revolt that had begun with such high hopes ...."