The sergeant gravely shook his head. "There
must be some mistake, sir. The men of my own
mess had no hammocks. There were not
hammocks enough on board, and the men of the two
next messes laid hold of hammocks for themselves
as soon as they got on board, and squeezed my
men out, as I may say."

"Had the squeezed-out men none then?"

"None, sir. As men died, their hammocks
were used by other men, who wanted
hammocks; but many men had none at all."

"Then you don't agree with the evidence on
that point?"

"Certainly not, sir. A man can't, when he
knows to the contrary."

"Did any of the men sell their bedding for
drink?"

"There is some mistake on that point too,
sir. Men were under the impression—I knew
it for a fact at the time—that it was not allowed
to take blankets or bedding on board, and so
men who had things of that sort came to sell
them purposely."

"Did any of the men sell their clothes for
drink?"

"They did, sir." (I believe there never was
a more truthful witness than the sergeant. He
had no inclination to make out a case.)

"Many?"

"Some, sir" (considering the question).
"Soldier-like. There had been long marching
in the rainy season, by bad roads—no roads at
all, in short—and when they got to Calcutta,
men turned to and drank, before taking a last
look at it. Soldier-like."

"Do you see any men in this ward, for
example, who sold clothes for drink at that time?"

The sergeant's wan eye, happily just beginning
to rekindle with health, travelled round the
place and came back to me. "Certainly, sir."

"The marching to Calcutta in the rainy
season must have been severe?"

"It was very severe, sir."

"Yet what with the rest and the sea air, I
should have thought that the men (even the
men who got drunk) would have soon begun
to recover on board ship?"

"So they might; but the bad food told upon
them, and when we got into a cold latitude, it
began to tell more, and the men dropped."

"The sick had a general disinclination for food,
I am told, Sergeant?"

"Have you seen the food, sir?"

"Some of it."

"Have you seen the state of their mouths,
sir?"

If the sergeant, who was a man of a few
orderly words, had spoken the amount of a
volume of this publication, he could not have
settled that question better. I believe that the
sick could as soon have eaten the ship, as the
ship's provisions.

I took the additional liberty with my friend
Pangloss, when I had left the sergeant with
good wishes, of asking Pangloss whether he
had ever heard of biscuit getting drunk and
bartering its nutritious qualities for putrefaction and
vermin; of peas becoming hardened in liquor;
of hammocks drinking themselves off the face of
the earth; of lime-juice, vegetables, vinegar,
cooking accommodation, water supply, and beer,
all taking to drinking together and going to
ruin? If not (I asked him), what did he say
in defence of the officers condemned by the
Coroner's Jury, who, by signing the General
Inspection report relative to the ship Great
Tasmania chartered for these troops, had deliberately
asserted all that bad and poisonous dunghill
refuse, to be good and wholesome food? My
official friend replied that it was a remarkable
fact, that whereas some officers were only
positively good, and other officers only comparatively
better, those particular officers were superlatively
the very best of all possible officers.

My hand and my heart fail me, in writing my
record of this journey. The spectacle of the
soldiers in the hospital-beds of that Liverpool
workhouse (a very good workhouse, indeed, be it
understood),was so shocking and so shameful, that
as an Englishman I burn and blush to remember
it. It would have been simply unbearable at the
time, but for the consideration and pity with
which they were soothed in their sufferings.

No punishment that our inefficient laws
provide, is worthy of the name when set against
the guilt of this transaction. But, if the memory
of it die out unavenged, and if it do not result
in the inexorable dismissal and disgrace of those
who are responsible for it, their escape will be
infamous to the Government (no matter of what
party) that so neglects its duty, and infamous
to the nation that tamely suffers such intolerable
wrong to be done in its name.

DELUGES.

NOAH'S was the last grand deluge; Adhémar's
is to be the next. Noah floated in safety through
the vast inundation which bears his name; it is
not likely that ALPHONSE JOSEPH ADHÉMAR,
author of the Révolution de la Mer, &c., will
enjoy the same good fortune, seeing that he was
born in 1797, and that his deluge is not to
happen before the lapse of six thousand and
nearly three hundred years. The event, of which
such long notice is given, is to be the result of
physical laws relating to heat and gravity, and
of certain well-known astronomical facts.

The immediate cause of the cataclysm thus
predicted, is to be a disturbance of the
equilibrium of the ocean—the inevitable
consequence of a change of its centre of gravity.
The seas, shallow in comparison with the mass
of the globe, are spread over the greater part
of its surface, so as to render it (were it flat
instead of spherical) like a dinner plate all
but filled with water. Tilt the plate ever so
little, and the water rushes to one side, leaving
the opposite side uncovered. Shift the centre
of gravity of the terrestrial globe, and the
oceans must obey the new point of attraction as
surely as the tides obey the moon. In Adhémar's
deluge, the South Pacific, South Atlantic, and
Antarctic Oceans are to be suddenly poured