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The ceremony of drafting the effective remains of three re giments, under orders for England, into corps destined for a longer period of service on this unhallowed soil, was the most painful one I ever witnessed. Some idea may be formed of its effect on the mind of the soldier by the exclamation of one unhappy wretch, who said, "It's like sending a man up the GALLOWS-TREE again, who had just been reprieved from it!" -a coarse but powerful illustration of his feelings. It was by no means an uncommon thing for soldiers thus drafted to mutilate themselves, by shooting off their hand or fingers, or doing themselves some grievous bodily injury, in order to be invalided and sent home; previouly to which they were, when able to stand under it, complimented with a thousand lashes as a memorial of the crime !

After the inspection, the commander-in-chief and the whole of the staff, sat down to a very abundant dejeune a la fourchette at head-quarters. Besides tea, coffee, and chocolate, there were various sorts of wines, cold meats, and above all an immense Christmas pie, made of all kinds of game-a present sent from Scotland to the commander-in-chief, and which was in the most perfect state of preservation. The rich tropical fruits were profusely spread on the board. The highly flavoured pine, fresh from the parent stock, the luscious rock melon, the quince-flavoured Guava, and the delicate little Martinique orange, the most delicious of its species, which seldom reaches England in a sound state, but was here presented on the branch bearing all the freshness of its rich perfume. Amongst others, there was one curiously shaped and beautifully coloured juicy fruit, called "paw-paw apples!" probably being that tempting species which led to the transgression of our original mother!

Notwithstanding all these temptations I ate and drank sparingly. After the repast the official business of the day commenced. Sir Ralph transacted business, as the Court Circular says, and gave an audience to Mr. Valentine Jones, then commissary-general, an office in those days inferior in point of rank, but infinitely superior in point of profit, to that at the present period. After a week's delay at Fort Royal, my general took leave of the commander-in chief. We set out for St. Pierre in a small canoe, followed by two of a larger class containing the servants and baggage.

Now, of all the craft I had ever sailed in, this appeared to me the most dangerous. The boat was formed of the trunk of a single tree, hollowed out to the thickness of about an inch-anda-half plank; the floor, perfectly flat and without keel, probably left half an inch thicker. The length of the smaller class, such as we then used, was from stem to stern about eighteen

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feet and beautifully moulded. A thaft forward, one in the centre, and another abaft for the steersman, formed the only description of seats. The passengers lie at their length in what may be called the cabin or stern-sheets, under a fixed canopy covered with straw-matting, impervious to the sun's rays, which hangs down on all sides.

Here we lay "cribbed and confined," wholly at the mercy and skill of the three negroes who formed the crew. When rowing or paddling the men pulled lustily with their short oar, having a broad blade shaped like the ace of hearts; while, to counteract the partial effects of strength on either side, and to add to the impetus, the helmsman plied with great force and dexterity his paddle, not much longer and full as broad as a garden-spade. So far all was well; but when the sail was set (a large lug of light canvass) and the paddles unshipped, the labours of the steersman became incredibly severe, for the canoe rather flew than sailed while under the influence of the fresh squalls that break through every opening on the coast. If the sense of danger in the momentary expectation of a capsize did not absorb every other feeling, the sight of the steersman and his extraordinary activity of arm, shifting from one quarter to the other with the rapidity of thought his powerful paddle, would have formed a picture well worth sketching.

To the negro amidships is intrusted the halyards; and the brutes seldom dowse their lug till the boat is half-full of water. To do these canoes justice, it must be admitted that they are admirable sea-boats, and carry a press of canvass under which a European boat of the same length and scanty beam would inevitably swamp. The boatmen think nothing of carrying sail over a visible rock on which there are not three inches water, and of which there are some dozens between Fort Royal and St. Pierre. The hatred of labour is so strong and universal amongst these wretched dregs of the human species, that they will risk drowning rather than take entirely to their paddles.

After a variety of perilous dips and lurches, we at last made the harbour point, where with much difficulty I persuaded them to strike mast and paddle to the shore. We were little more than two hours traversing the twenty-four miles, during some portions of which we flew along the surface of the wave at the rate of fourteen miles an hour at the most moderate computation. The larger canoes a-stern were an hour later.

The want of the servants obliged us to wait their arrival at the hotel kept by Patty Chalote, where we were regaled with a second breakfast, the delicacies of which would have tempted an anchorite, and which I positively could not resist. The chocolate, lightly spiced, was the most delicious I had ever VOL. II.

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tasted; and I felt unfeigned pleasure to perceive my generat enjoy a new French roll, (white as the napkin which enfolded it,) enriched with his favourite sweetmeat the jelly of the Guava. Leaving him on the sofa, where the viranda, open on two sides of the apartment for the admission of the refreshing sea-breezes, invited repose, I set off for the house allotted for his quarters, and which I found to be quite a palace compared with the naked whitewashed walls and planked ceiling of our late abode. Silk curtains and Venetian blinds adorned all the windows, the extreme depth of which proved the walls to have been constructed hurricane-proof. The floors were covered with the finest estaras from the Havannah; and the furniture, though scanty compared with modern European taste, was all of the first order of elegance.

It belonged to a colonist of rank, the Countess de Boisville, a widow, whose only child, a youth about sixteen years of age, was at that period absent from the island. One entire etage, consisting of fine spacious apartments, was assigned to the general and his suite, besides cooking and sleeping rooms on the ground-floor, for the slaves and servants.

The usual luxury of the higher classes a large silken hammock, was suspended in the apartment destined for the general, besides a lofty bed (completely enclosed by musquito-curtains) standing out detached from the wall, the foot of each pillar resting in a small square porcelain jar, filled with water, to prevent the encroachments of that troublesome and persevering insect, the ant.

At the rear of the house was a large and luxuriant garden, which, at the season of the year in which I first saw it, was quite a picture of beauty. It was daily irrigated by the water of an extremely deep well, raised by the primeval process of the horizontal wheel, with cogs acting on a vertical one, to which was attached a rope with earthen pots, which on each revolution emptied themselves into a reservoir. It was worked by an ancient lazy donkey, attended by as lazy and a more ancient negro; who, whenever the animal stopped, would first expostulate with, then scold and curse him; and when, at last, words and abuse failed to put the brute in motion, his tyrant would start up from his recumbent posture, and deal a shower of heavy blows on the sounding ribs of the imperturbable animal, who, thus urged, again proceeded on his monotonous round, while his irascible driver would once more sink down into a state of half-dozing apathy.

Brigade-major Grantz, who preceded us, had already made his choice, having taken possession, on his first coming, of a roomy apartment in the rear of that intended for the general, and separated by a passage. I occupied a smaller one close

beside my chief's, and looking directly on the ocean; an arrangement which it gave me pleasure to find met the general's approbation.

The house stood in an elevated situation, over-looking the irregularly built town, which, from its situation, ought to have been as wholesome as any in the tropics; but troops invariably engender disease, alınost inseparable from those duties which they are called on to perform, and from their exposure to the destructive damps of the night after days of burning heat.

Hardships, from which the meanest of the negro slaves, and even the beasts of the field are exempt, are the lot of those who embrace the glorious profession of a soldier!

CHAPTER XXIV.

"Bade him in grief to distant lands retire,
A widow's husband and a childless sire."

My report of the house and all its conveniences being made, in the fulness of my heart I ventured to say, "Now, sir, you will indeed be restored to health." '-"Ah! Moore," observed the general, kindly, "you have all the characteristic ardour of your country; but with youth and health you can afford to be sanguine."

Leaving the far-famed, and then pretty Patty Chalote's we proceeded up the town, through the principal streets of which a rill of pure water constantly runs, supplied by a branch from a mountain cataract at some miles distant. Notwithstanding this ever-ready convenience for the despatch of all filth to the sea, the stench of rotten fruits, decayed fish, rancid oil, and all the abominations of a black town, was occasionally intolerable; here and there, the nose as well as the eyes were regaled by the fragrant perfume of heaps of fresh-gathered fruit, collected for sale, some under the guardianship of pretty negro girls, as black and shining as jet, with no other clothing than a shortsleeved chemise and petticoat, the snowy whiteness of which presented a powerful contrast to the deep glossy darkness of their ebon skin. Over a group of these, presided some crusty old negress, whose superiority of rank and office was marked by the broad-brimmed straw-hat stuck on one side of her head,

so as to display the bow of the Madras handkerchief which bound her wrinkled brows, and the large golden cross and earrings, and the many-coloured broad-striped petticoat: while as a finish to her costume, her ill-shaped, unsocked feet appeared thrust into a pair of showy slippers, invariably down at the heal.

On our approach to the house, the general admitted its appearance justified all my encomiums; and this a view of the interior confirmed.

Feeling himself sufficiently recovered to transact business, I had the agreeable duty to draw out a sketch of the orders of the day, in which the general announced that he would receive the officers of the garrison of all ranks, from eleven till two o'clock the ensuing day.

By nine, next morning, our breakfast was over, and we set about placing our house in order. The general's liberality was evinced by the profusion of refreshments of all kinds set out on the buffet, in the anti-room adjoining that in which the levee was to be held; for in this land of uncertainty, Horace's maxim "carpe diem,' universally prevails.

The levee was crowded; and not less than two hundred German, French, and British officers were present. The ceremony of introduction of the former was very properly intrusted to Brigade-major Grantz, from whose throat the strong Sclavonian gutturals rolled out in all their native roughness. The general was quite at home with his visiters, perfectly master of their language; and many a flaxen-fringed mouth that morning extended itself in grateful smiles at the kind and dignified reception its owner met with.

The band of the Walstein regiment was stationed in the wide and lofty hall; its martial music attracting to the front of the house hundreds of the population of all shades of colour, from the deepest black, to the delicate demi-white of the beautiful mestiso. To behold the joyous grimaces, and hear the chattering and laughing of those untutored children of the sun, one would be tempted to doubt the bitterness of the draught of slavery, so feelingly deplored by our own sentimental tourist, who threw such a charm over all he touched. On the contrary, they appeared to be the gayest creatures in the universe, and slaves alone to the pleasure of the passing hour.

But it must be admitted, for the honour of our ancient rival, that the lot of slavery in the French islands was at all times divested of the horrors by which those cruel taskmasters, the Dutch and English colonists of former days, rendered the name of West India slavery so terrible to the ear, and so appalling to the heart of the benevolent and enlightened European.

The planters in the Spanish colonies bore the reputation of

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