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were to do there. There is not a spot where the horses could stand twenty yards beyond the lines ; nor could they reach Fort Augusta at all except in barges. However, it was perhaps well that they were sent. Horses and men went the way of the rest. The loss of the men might have been supplied, but horses were costly, and the loss of them was more serious. Fort Augusta was gradually abandoned, and is now used only as a powder magazine. A guard is kept there of twenty blacks from the West Indian force, but even these are changed every ten days — so deadly the vapour of that malarious jungle is now understood to be. I never saw so spectral a scene as met my eyes when we steamed up to the landing place —ramparts broken down, and dismantled cannon lying at the foot of the wall overgrown by jungle. The sentinel who presented arms was like a corpse in uniform. He was not pale, for he was a negro —he was green, and he looked like some ghoul or afrite in a ghastly cemetery. The roofs of the barracks and storehouses had fallen in, the rafters being left standing with the light shining between them as through the bones of skeletons. Great piles of shot lay rusting, as not worth removal; among them conical shot, so recently had this fatal charnel house been regarded as a fit location for British artillerymen. I breathed more freely as we turned our backs upon the hideous memorial of parliamentary administration, and steamed away into a purer air. My conservative instincts had undergone a shock. As we look back into the past, the brighter features stand out conspicuously. The mistakes and miseries have sunk in the shade and are forgotten. In the present faults and merits are visible alike. The faults attract chief notice that they may be mended ; and as there seem so many of them, the impulse is to conclude that the past was better. It is well to be sometimes re-