being equally kind, and attentive to the comforts and wants of their dark brethren, as far as the humble condition of the latter admitted: this I can well believe; but to the virtue of the French colonists in these respects, I can offer my testimony from personal observation, and with the expression of my humble but sincere admiration. Before three o'clock our house had poured out the last of its visiters, when I prevailed on the general to seek an hour's repose, which the coolness of his own apartment invited, whilst I proceeded to pay my respects to our hostess, who had, the previous night, entertained us with distinguished hospitality. The Countess lay in a loose muslin dress in her extended silken hammock, enjoying the gentle motion it received from the hands of a mulatto girl in attendance, and whom my presence for a time released from her task; but a tete-a-tete with a Frenchwoman in her chamber, however customary with persons of that nation, rather put me to the blush. As my eye became accustomed to the dimness or petit-jour of the room, and each object seemed more distinct to my vision, I could perceive that the capacious apartment was the seat of every luxury-a magnificent bed in one alcove-a large porcelain bath in another while on the marble slabs, supported by gilded dolphins, which ornamented the piers, were placed vases containing a profusion of the choicest flowers, amidst the varied sweets of which the orange and lime blossoms blended their rich and almost overpowering perfume. My hostess was a very lovely woman. Although by confession five and thirty and a child of the tropics, her lustrous eye, the wax-like clearness of her skin, and voluptuous figure, sunk full ten years of her age in the eye of admiring youth. The thin Holland sheet which overspread her, yielding to the air, clung to her finely developed limbs and bosom at each motion of the hammock, and embraced its treasure as if enamoured of its placc: "Senseless linen-happier therein than It" As I gazed on her fixed and dazzling eye, either its brilliancy or that of my imagination seemed to light the late dim apartment-I was no longer in the dark! After an hour's visit, which appeared but a quarter of the time, I retired to my room to ponder on my bonheur, in making such a delightful acquaintance. My reveries were interrupted by the appearance of a fine tall negro, whose services, with those of his little mulatto wife's, the countess had been kind enough to bestow on me during my stay in the island.. The dinner-hour was five, at which time we had the four colonels of the foreign brigade to entertain. The entire conversation having been carried on in the German tongue, I was quite thrown out, and could only take the humbler part of inviting the guests to partake of the several dishes, by their French names; which, thanks to the admitted supremacy of our Gallic neighbours in l'art de la cusine, renders them so. universally known. At night the whole party repaired to the rouge et noir table, where the bank of Madame Febvre, and the colonial militia colonel, St. Clair, presented a fonds of about one thousand joes (eight thousand dollars.) A German could no more live without his pipe than without the cards. The solemn gravity, the perfect freedom from all anxiety as to the fate of their large stakes, which these veteran gamblers evinced, excited in my inexperienced mind the greatest astonishment. One of the party, Colonel Count Schlamertzdorff, (without seeming to think the slightest apology necessary for the indelicacy of the action,) divested himself of his jacket previously to taking his seat beside the lady of the house; who, with arched forehead, full dark eye, inimitable mouth, lovely contour of face, long black tresses, surmounted by a tiara of pearls and diamonds, might have stood for the portrait of the seducing queen of Egypt. Here, with all the phlegmatic quietude of his nature, the count laid down a heap of gold, probably to the amount of two or three hundred pounds; and, in his shirt-sleeves, pun-. ted away without condescending to bestow a smile or a frown on the vicissitudes of fortune. I accompanied our hostess as her cavalier serviente, followed by two servants in rich livery-coats, vests, and breeches, whose bare black legs presented a most unseemly finish to their rather tawdry top vestments. My declining the first invitation to play did not put me out of the pale of sporting society; on the contrary, I held my place behind the chairs of the players, enjoying the conversation of some very charming women, whom from my heart I wished to have seen more amiably employed. I held the bou-. quet for one, while she made her arrangements on the tablet of chance, or for another became the bearer of some delicacy from the buffet; and when the hour of supper arrived, iny com.. pany was as earnestly and politely requested, as if I had been, some rich pigeon, in whose wealth all hoped to participate. If at all accessible to the seductions of play, even by the allurements and example of the softer sex, here was my hour of danger; but fortunately I never have had a taste that way. I was sufficiently amused, but more often pained by merely looking Some adventurers, elated with their good fortune, would fall into the extravagance of embracing all within their reach; on. while within the next half hour I have seen the same persons, on a reverse of luck, retire into a corner, gnawing, tearing, and trampling under foot (amidst the smiles of the more fortunate) the detested pack of cards, on the dealing out of which their golden dreams had vanished! On one of the many nights which I passed at this temple of fortune, while hanging over the shoulder of a very lovely young woman, I was rather rudely pushed aside by a half-tipsy John Bull, an officer or clerk in the Commissary-general's department, who with a handful of joes bore down my humbler pretensions to the place I occupied, and I instantly gave way. He soon, however, as it appeared to me, was reduced to his last stake; and which to the amount I believe of five or six joes, he placed upon a card, and almost unconscious of his movements, reeled into a corner, where, throwing himself into a chair, he indulged in a nap. His stake won; and not being withdrawn, was again and again covered by the bankers; those engaged in play taking the same care of the increase as of their own. The run of chance against the bank on that occasion was so truly unfortunate that it became exhausted, and was at last declared closed for the night. Every one scraped up and counted their gains; one heap remaining on the table unowned, amounting in value to seven or eight hundred dollars. No person appeared to claim the gift of fortune, till the young lady, with whom I was in tender conversation when obliged to make room for the man of rations, (who was still sleeping in his corner,) declared Mons. le Commissaire the owner of the heap. He was accordingly roused from his slumbers to receive the intelligence of his good fortune; and on making his acknowledgments to the company for their honourable protection of his winnings, he invited the whole party to a dejeune a la fourchette and a waltz, the day next but one following, the splendour of which convinced me that the commissariat (putting the chances of rouge et noir entirely out of the account) must be a very attractive kind of service. The history of one day is that of a season in this country, unless when the army takes the field, an event to which we now anxiously looked forward. Emissaries had been despatched to sound the disposition of the malcontents at Trinidad, the reports from whom were favourable to the long projected attempt on the whole of the Spanish possessions in that quarter. The seeds of revolt against the mother-country were, so early as 1796, widely scattered throughout all the Spanish settlements on the coast of America by the help of British gold and British emissaries; but the fruits of this work did not appear for some years, and even then with very questionable advantages to Great Britain. CHAPTER XXV. Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars; Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, The royal, banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!" RE-ENFORCEMENTS of foreign troops continued to arrive in the islands, and occasionally a British regiment: of the former two corps of French emigrants were sent to St. Pierre. As to what cause it was attributable, I venture not to give an opinion, but immediately after their arrival a dreadful mortality prevailed. The general and regimental hospitals were crowded, and scarcely an evening passed without an officer, and perhaps ten unfortunate men being consigned to the grave. The prevailing disease was dysentery: some few cases of the yellow or Bulam fever appeared; but even this was doubted by one portion of the board of physicians, assembled by order of the commander-in-chief for the investigation of the subject; whilst the other as strenuously insisted on the existence of that dreadful disorder in its worst character. It afforded but poor consolation to the expiring victim of disease to be assured by his physician or surgeon that, however fatal its termination, it was not at all events the genuine yellow fever! 66 The war of systems, both for prevention and cure, then raged at its full height; the water-drinking " and "starvation system" of Doctor M-y was combated by the "generous diet" theory of Doctors Y-and R-d;-both, however, failed! Human life seemed to depend upon a mere chance; and in hundreds. of cases those who were least attentive to its preservation, escaped the too general pestilence; while the more temperate and cautious perished. It was, however, observed that the Germans suffered less than the French-the British more severely than either-and of those the carnivorous English more than the half herbivorous Irish, or the meal-fed Scot! My general, who was one of the most abstemious of men, preserved his health tolerably well during his trying period; but having been unluckily exposed to a heavy shower of rain,. he once more showed symptoms of that insidious malady which for years will cling to those who have been once its victims. After complaining of general chilliness in his blood, he shortly after was seized with the succeeding attack of burning fever: a few days of quietness and care served to throw off this aguish attack, and he had once more resumed his usual habits, when, by a fatal confidence in his amended health, he ventured to attend to the grand dinner, and ball given at Government House, on the 12th of August, the anniversary of the then Prince of Wales' birth-day. I had never beheld him to greater advantage. He had that morning received from England a small packet, which, after kissing almost a thousand times, I saw him deposite in his desk, and an unusual flow of spirits that evening lit up his fine expressive countenance. But, while in the seeming enjoyment of the gay scene, the general was, about ten in the evening, suddenly struck with such a general debility as rendered it necessary to remove him instantly to his house, whither he was borne by negroes on the same sofa on which he had been placed at the first moment of this awful attack. I followed in silence and in sorrow, and could but ill endure the misery of seeing him from whom every hour of my life I felt increasing respect, once more laid on the bed of sickness. The chief of the medical staff was soon in attendance; between whom and a French physician, who was held in the highest estimation by the native families, a long controversy took place. The former was for the immediate exhibition of powerful medicines; the latter for "cooling drinks" only. During this discussion the object of it lay insensible to all that passed, seemingly overpowered by a sense of pain, which he had no other mode of expressing than by firmly pressing his hands to his temples, as if he would compress that "distracted globe" within the compass of his grasp. Calomel carried the day against ptisan, and large boluses were immediately administered, against the warm protest of the French doctor, who indignantly retired. The situation of the patient was too dangerous to allow me to trust him to ordinary care. I determined, therefore, to keep watch myself during the night, to see that the negress, who was called in to attend him, performed her duty; for, too much accustomed to such melancholy scenes, the feelings of such persons are often blunted by their horrid frequency. The exhaustion produced by the medicines induced me to apprehend that my general's death was approaching. A little after day broke I despatched a messenger for the doctor, who, to do him justice, evinced a humane anxiety for his patient which did honour to his heart; while his acknowledged medi |