FORT
AUGUSTA
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his own profession. Drawings of ships and boats of all sorts and in all attitudes by his own brush or pencil were hanging on the walls of his working room. He was good enough to ask me to spend a day or two with him at Port Royal before I left the island, and I looked forward with special pleasure to becoming closer acquainted with such a genuine piece of fine-grained British oak. There were the usual ceremonies to be attended to. The officers of the guardship and gunboats had to be called on. The forts constructed, or in the course of construction, were duly inspected. I believe that there is a real serious intention to strengthen Port Royal in view of the changes which may come about through the opening, if that event ever takes place, of the Darien canal. Our last visit was to a fort deserted, or all but deserted —the once too celebrated Fort Augusta, which deserves particular description. It stands on the inner side of the lagoon commanding the deep-water channel at the point of the great mangrove swamp at the mouth of the Cobre river. For the purpose for which it was intended no better situation could have been chosen, had there been nothing else to be considered except the defence of the harbour, for a vessel trying to reach Kingston had to pass close in front of its hundred guns. It was constructed on a scale becoming its importance, with accommodation for two or three regiments, and the regiments were sent thither, and they perished, regiment after regiment, officers and men, from the malarious exhalations of the morass. Whole battalions were swept away. The ranks were filled up by reinforcements from home, and these, too, went the same road. Of one regiment the only survivors, according to the traditions of the place, were a quartermaster and a corporal. Finally it occurred to the authorities at the Horse Guards that a regiment of Hussars would be a useful addition to the garrison. It was not easy to see what Hussars q