diately ensued between the men and the officers. These last were joined by the passengers, but still the others were the more numerous, and the battle continued, with uncertain success, for several hours. At last, the fumes of the liquor being well-nigh disper. sed, the men sunk from their desperate audaciousness into an extreme of panic, and besought mercy on their knees. The tranquillity thus restored was, however, deceitful and shortlived. In the middle of the night a cry of fury was heard, and the mutineers again rushed, with drawn swords, knives, and daggers, upon their officers. The brutal rage of their attack was such as to take away all opportunity of parley, and a general battle was again begun, which soon strewed the raft with carnage. It is not to be denied, that a temporary madness was the principal cause of this tumult. The eyes of both parties, suffering under want of food and rest, and under the immediate influence of the fear of death, were visited, like those of persons who have swallowed opium, with strange visions, now pleasing, now terrible in their colouring. While some felt themselves impelled to deeds of sanguine fury; others were haunted with soft dreams, the phantasms of beauti. ful shores and groves, and the most delicious of wild and wandering hopes. Some tossed themselves into the sea in agonies of horror; others with smiling countenances, and as if with the certainty of reaching the imaginary coasts around them. "I go," said

one,

"to seek for assistance; you shall soon see me return." "In the midst of this general madness," says the above-quoted narrative," one saw these unhappy men rushing upon their companions, sword in hand, and demanding from them the wing of a chicken; others asked for their hammocks, still fancying themselves to be on board the Meduse. Even after this fatal night, many imagined them

selves in the morning to have awakened from a frightful dream, in which battles and slaughter had disturbed their rest.' It was found at daybreak, that during this night of horror sixty-five of the mutineers had perished. One cask of wine only remained; and after various fruitless attempts to catch fish, recourse was had for food to the hats, the sword-belts, the linen -last of all, to the bodies of the slain.

The third night which succeeded this terrible repast, presented another scene scarcely inferior in horror to the two preceding ones. Numbers in the morning were found to have died of cold and thirst during the hours of darkness, and tossed overboard; one body being retained for the purpose of food-the body of one who had shared, the evening before, in all the hopes, fears, and confidences of this common abandonment. A shoal of fish passing by in the night, left some hundred fixed among the spars. These furnished the poor sufferers with the means of a less disgusting meal than they had lately been used to. The fourth night witnessed new mutinies and massacres, the chief disturbance arising from some Spaniards and Italians on board, who had hitherto been comparatively quiet. These being overpowered and thrown into the sea, and two French sailors, who had clandestinely tapped the cask of wine, being condemned to the same fate, tranquillity, such as might be in such a scene, was once more restored.

On the fifth morning, the survivors were in number only twenty-eight, and of these no more than fifteen appeared to have such remains of strength as might give them any chance of holding out more than a few hours. After a solemn deliberation, these fifteen threw their weaker companions into the sea. "Three sailors, and a soldier," says the narrative, "undertook the execution of this cruel sentence; we turned away our eyes and shed

tears of blood over the fate of these unfortunate men, but this painful sacrifice saved the fifteen who remained." Six days and nights of misery were yet to be endured by this remnant; at the end of that time a small brig was descried. She had been sent from Senegal to enquire after their fate. Every heart was melted by the deplo. rable condition of the few miserable victims on the raft. "Let any one," says our narrative, "figure to himself fifteen unhappy creatures, almost naked; their bodies shrivelled by the rays of the sun; ten of them scarcely able to move; our limbs stripped of the skin; a total change in all our features; our eyes hollow and savage; our long beards, which gave us an air almost hideous: we were in fact but the shadows of ourselves." Of these fifteen, six died immediately after they landed at St Louis, and the other nine, covered with scars, and exhausted by their calamitous situation, are stated to have lost almost all resemblance to their former selves.

It is distressing to add, that even this tardy relief was chiefly owing not to the humanity of the French, but to their cupidity. The captain of the Meduse, we have already seen, had in the first instance provided for his own safety; now, he did not even shew the smallest anxiety to do anything to wards that of his crew. He expressed some concern, however, about some stores which had been left; but, after all, it was chiefly owing to the interference of Major Peddie, and Captain Campbell, British officers resident at St Louis, that a brig was at length launched to seek and save the relics of the abandoned raft. From the raft the brig proceeded to the frigate itself; on reaching which, they were struck with surprise and horror by the sight of three wretched creatures, just about to expire upon the deck. These, it

seems, were the last of seventeen who had preferred staying by the wreck when their companions quitted it. Hunger, thirst, and heat, had infuriated them, like their brethren of the raft; and the whole, excepting these three, had died either by their own hands, or by those of each other. The three remaining wretches lived on different parts of the wreck, and never had any communication, except when. they rushed on each other, in sudden starts of ferocity, with drawn knives, and cries of," Blood!"

The calm

These incidents, abridged as they are from the copious narrative of two of the officers left on the raft, are sufficient to prove the egregious want of all discipline, subordination, and good faith among the crew of the Meduse. The cowardly escape of the captain and the principal officers,-the mutual distrust, anger, and general effervescence of all bad passions among the men abandoned on the raft, their cruelty, ferocity, and malignity of wrath, all tend to excite in the reader a just sense of horror for the depravity of their unmanly natures. and steady heroism displayed by British officers and seamen in many similar situations, and more especially in that of the shipwreck of the Alceste, (Captain Murray Maxwell,) which occurred nearly about the same time, cannot be remembered without exciting pleasing views concerning the comparative character of our own countrymen. The particulars of that last-mentioned shipwreck we shall have occasion to notice hereafter. In the meantime, however, we should perhaps beware of stretching the conclusion farther than the premises may authorise, and of condemning a nation in the mass, for the guilt of a handful of individuals, guilt viewed by the majority of the French nation with perhaps no less horror than by ourselves.*

Throughout the other countries of Europe, there occurred this year little which we should think worthy of recording; such, at least, is the impres sion produced upon us by a perusal of the journals of the day, and as yet we have not had it in our power to consult more valuable authorities. It is long before the materials of the internal history of the continent become accessible even to those more immediately interested in its study. In In Germany, however, there is no doubt that a considerable ferment of opinion contiuued to give some cause of alarm to the governments, although the particulars are cautiously kept back by those who have, or suppose themselves to have, an interest in their suppression. In Spain, a few attempts at in

surrection appear to have attested, in various parts of the kingdom, that dissatisfaction which the odious tyranny of the misguided Ferdinand continued to excite among his subjects; but of these the state of the Spanish press is such as to render it impossible for us to have any accurate knowledge.

In the European world, therefore, every thing was at peace; and, excepting the continued convulsions in Spanish America, and a slight and transient renewal of our own hostilities with the Nepaulese in India, there remains no narrative of warfare to close the history of this year. The affairs of Spanish America form, perhaps, the most important subject of political consideration, on which we have as yet said little to our readers.

the sequel, been rendered lamentably apparent, by the utter failure of several ill-devised expeditions, at once military and mercantile, which had been rashly fitted out by individuals of our nation, for the purpose of aiding the cause of those Americans who had disclaimed their allegiance to King Ferdinand. Even as yet, if we may judge from the paragraphs in the public prints, no inconsiderable portion of the same ignorance seems to prevail among us; and, upon the whole, we imagine our readers will have no objection to accompany us in somewhat of a more clear and full narrative of the whole dissentions of Spanish America, than we have as yet had it in our power to place before them.

Of the late and present convulsions of Spanish America, as of many other mighty convulsions, the proximate causes have been the least important. The main elements of the violence, whose eruption has caused such a scene of devastation, are to be sought for, not in any new or partial vexations, but rather in the settled displeasure which had been engendered in the bosoms of by far the greater part of the population of these regions, by the unwise, as well as the ungenerous tyranny to which the policy of Spain had subjected them, during a space of little less than three hundred years, commencing almost with the very period of the establishment of her authority within their bounds. On the first formation of a system of Spanish government in those immense districts, the importance of the countries thus united to the sceptre of Castile, was felt in fullness by those who bore it. From Mexico to Paraguay, inclusive, almost the whole of the regions wherein the Spanish language is now naturalised, were won to the crown of Spain not by public, but by private exertion. The European sovereign allowed the whole expences of the conquering ex

peditions to be defrayed by the individuals who personally embarked in them, along with others who staked their private capitals upon the success of their arms. To these persons, in return for the acquisitions which they might make to the crown of their prince, was offered, not only the feudal possession of the soil which they should conquer, but a full parti cipation in all those political rights, which, in their native country, they had been accustomed to see conjoined with such possession. The regions which they might subdue were to form separate states, possessing, like those into which the Spanish peninsula itself is divided, separate and independent privileges, laws, and administration. In this administration, the principal share was to be continued for ever among the free Spaniards who should become settlers, and their free descendants. These men were not to be supposed to forfeit, either for themselves or their posterity, any part of the birthright of Spaniards, by conferring the most important services in their power upon the Spanish crown. They were to be in America, as their ancestors had been in Europe, the members of a nation possessing and claiming popular rights. Their blood was, in no respect, to be held debased because it was transplanted to a new soil, for the very purpose of enriching and strengthening the old one.

The unnecessary vagueness of common speech has, long since, confounded the common ideas of the origin and character of these Spanish possessions, with those entertained by us in regard to the colonies fixed by ourselves and others on the same continent. But, in truth, the Spanish provinces do not differ from those which once were English and French, in soil and productions, more than in the nature of their early history, and the character of their first settlers. While other