nd from the Gambia River to Sierra Leone.]

[Footnote 44: Captain Berwick, Royal African Corps; Lieutenant Lardner,
2nd West India Regiment; and Captain Hughes, Gambia Militia.]

[Footnote 45: An account of the fatal hurricane by which Barbados
suffered in 1831, published at Bridgetown, Barbados, 1831.

"DETACHMENT 1ST WEST INDIA REGIMENT.

"Return of the men killed and wounded during the late hurricane, 15th
August, 1831:

"Killed--Henry Read, private.

"Wounded--4 privates.

(Signed) "H. BROCKLASS, Lieut., 1st W.I. Regt."

]

CHAPTER XVII.

THE MUTINY OF THE RECRUITS AT TRINIDAD, 1837.

On April 1st, 1836, the 1st West India Regiment was increased from eight
to ten companies, and recruits being obtained with difficulty, the
Government commenced the injudicious practice of enrolling the slaves,
disembarked from captured slavers, in the West India regiments. In
September of that year the slaves from two slavers which had been
captured off Grenada by H.M.S. _Vestal_, 112 in number, were drafted
into the 1st West India Regiment. Similarly, in January, 1837, 109; on
May 20th, 112; and on May 21st, 93 slaves, recently disembarked from
slavers captured by H.M.S. _Griffon_ and _Harpy_, were sent to the
regiment. Thus, in the years 1836-7, 426 such slaves were received, 314
of them in the year 1837 alone.

The formality of asking these men whether they were willing to serve was
never gone through, many of them did so unwillingly; and it must be
remembered that they were all savages in the strictest sense of the
word, entirely unacquainted with civilisation, and with no knowledge of
the English language. The majority of them were natives of the Congo and
of Great and Little Popo, two towns on the western frontier of Dahomey;
and it may be here remarked that the negroes of these districts have
maintained their reputation for ultra-barbarism even to the present day.

The only result to be anticipated from such a wholesale drafting of
savages into a regiment was a mutiny, and every inducement to mutiny
appears to have been afforded them. Instead of dividing them
proportionately between the head-quarters and the detachments, they were
nearly all kept at the former; and but three weeks before the actual
rising, as if to further remove all check, 100 rank and file, all old
soldiers, were sent from Trinidad and distributed between St. Lucia and
Dominica. Thus, on June 18th, 1837, the day of the mutiny, with