boats towing ahead, is twenty-five miles, and
not always that. We anchored for the night off
Fort Alfred. This fort consists of about four
acres of grass, with one gun placed defiantly in
the centre. On all festive occasions the gun is
supplied with a limited quantity of powder, and
crammed with grass up to the muzzle. It
astonishes the natives, and duly asserts and
proclaims the birthday of her Majesty the
Queen, the landing of his Excellency the
Governor, or any other legitimate cause for
rejoicing.

We found nothing worthy of note at Fort
Alfred, except the mosquitoes and sand-flies.
The former were very hairy and determined.
Fortunately they were not unanimous in their
attack, or we must have been dragged through
the port-holes and into the river.

As we advanced next day, the banks were
covered with gigantic mangroves, sixty or
seventy feet high. They formed a dense, impenetrable
jungle, and with their arching roots
made a forest both above and beneath the water.
The sun was again fierce and hot; our paint
blistered; the tints of the mangrove— from palest
green to dark olive— glowed in it, and the sullen
flowing river reflected it back, as if the surface
were of steel. The jungle abounded with yelling
parrots and pretty little red monkeys. We
passed three pelicans; one of them received a
charge of shot, and uttered a sound something
between the squeal of a pig and the noise
caused by sharpening a saw.

In this part of the river hippopotami abound,
and every now and then huge uncouth heads
appeared above the surface; one matron rose with
her offspring sitting on the back of her neck.

Next, the mangroves disappeared, and the
banks to the water's edge were clothed with
palmetto, palmyra, date-palm, and palm-oil trees.
The palm-nuts hung in splendid clusters, and in a
palm-grove we came to a colony of dog-faced
monkeys. They barked and raced from tree to
tree, and made most ludicrous faces at us.

It was not only the beauty of the trees which
one admired, but the luxuriance of the orchids,
and the creepers, and the gigantic convolvuli,
heavy with blossom. We saw flocks of cranes,
of all sorts and descriptions, great baobabs with
enormous fruit and scanty leaves, a profusion of
growth, a grandeur which it is impossible to
surpass, but which is depressing, because it seems
to have superseded humanity.

At length, after a weary voyage, we reached
the mouth of the Tambacunda Creek, and
dropped anchor.

On the following morning the storming party,
consisting of three companies of the 99th West
Indian Regiment, were transhipped from the
Swan to the Hastings. The Swan could not
pass the bar at the mouth of the creek; if she
had been able to do so, she would have found
plenty of water inside. The entrance to the
creek is very narrow, but it soon widens out to
about three-quarters of a mile, and, as the banks
are not very densely clothed, glimpses are to be
got of a tolerably open plain country.

After steaming an hour and a half, we
arrived off the landing-place, about eight miles
from the entrance to the creek. The enemy
had thrown up a breastwork, flanked by
an earthwork its whole length of two hundred
yards. There were natives occupying it; and
chiefs, with their long robes streaming in the
wind, were dashing about on horseback and
brandishing their lances. Before commencing
operations the governor gave them a last
chance, and summoned them to surrender; but
they answered that they were all men there, and
that if we thought we could land, we had better
try. They were then told, that if, at the expiration
of an hour they did not clear out, we
should open fire. This was done to enable the
Hastings to moor, and take up her position:
also to give time for the Ramsgate to come
up, and the other vessels with the troops. Just
as the hour expired the Ramsgate hove in sight
towing two ships, and the Hastings fired her
broadside. A column of dust fifty feet high
rose from the earthwork, and there was a roar
from the adversary, who kept up a spattering
fire henceforth on all that showed themselves.
We saw a large gap where the sixty-eight
pounder had gone through, but the twenty-fours
did not seem to do much more than stir
up the dust. As the ships came up one by one,
and took their positions, a heavy fire of musketry
was commenced, and no head or hand could be
shown above the embankment without a hole
being made in it. One fellow excited universal
admiration. He was a tearing mad Mollah, or
greegree man, quite covered with greegrees and
strips of the Koran. He jumped on the top
of the embankment and walked deliberately
along it from end to end, screaming his war-cry,
and waving his sword. He was the mark for a
thousand rifles, pointed by practised riflemen,
yet he escaped unscathed. On his passing back,
a shell burst close to him, smothering him with
dust. We thought he was gone; but when the
dust cleared away he stood there safe, and after
a farewell shake of his sword and a yell, he
jumped down into the trench.

At the end of four hours, it appeared that the
damage done to the earthwork was so small that
it would present just as many difficulties to the
storming party as it would have done before the
firing commenced. The captain of the Hastings
wanted to keep up the firing till sun-down, and
then to begin again next morning, and keep on
until he had knocked a hole in the embankment.
The colonels of the two regiments inclined to this
course, for, if we landed in small boats, somebody
would certainly be shot, and possibly a
good many somebodies. But the major, who
commanded the storming party, begged hard to
be allowed to land, if only with his own regiment.
He was ready to stake his commission on
clearing the enemy out of the earthwork, and
covering the landing of the main body.

He was some thirty years younger than the two
colonels, and more enthusiastic; perhaps, too,
at eight-and-twenty a man has more stomach
for fighting than in after life. Anyhow it was