s of old times, when you killed one, twenty would seem to
rise up in his place. Had I have known what I have since learnt and
had been provided with the essential oil of pennyroyal, we should have
conquered all these light troops in a few days. A few drops of this
essential oil, dropped here and there upon the blankets infested with
fleas, and they will abandon the garment. The effluvium of it destroys
them.

Confined below, we knew little of what was going on upon deck; some of
us, however, were more or less there every day. Nothing occurred
worthy of notice during our passage to England, excepting the retaking
of a brig captured a few hours before on the Grand Bank, by the
frigate President, commodore Rodgers. From information obtained from
the midshipman who commanded the prize, we learnt the course of the
President, whereupon we altered ours to avoid being captured. A few
hours after this we fell in with the Bellerophon, a British
seventy-four, who went, from our information, in pursuit of the
President. We could easily perceive that the fame of our frigates had
inspired these masters of the ocean with a degree of respect bordering
on dread. We overheard the sailors say that they had rather fall in
with two French frigates than one American. We thought, or it might be
conceit, that we were spoken to with more kindness at this time. I
have certainly had occasion for remarking, that prosperity increases
the insults and hard heartedness of the British; and that we never
received so much humane attention as when they apprehended an attack
from us, as in the case of alarm at Halifax. I am more and more
convinced that cowardice is the mother of cruelty. Were I to draw the
picture of cruelty, I would paint him with a feminine faintness. The
free and horrible use of the _halter_ in London, is from _fear_. I was
brought up, all my life, even until I left my father's house, and came
off without calculation, or reflection on this wild adventure in a
privateer, in the opinion that the English were an humane, generous,
and magnanimous people, and that none but Turks, Frenchmen, and
Algerines, were cruel; but my experience for three years past has
corrected my false notions of this proud nation. If they do not impale
men as the Algerines and Turks do, or roast a man as the Indians do,
and as the Inquisitors do, they will leave him to starve, and linger
out his miserable days in the hole of a ship, or in a prison, where
the bless