; but the king's fortune, ever faithful to his
glory, has since made it appear, by the miscarriage of the expedition of
Gigeri, that such projects only as were planned by himself were worthy
of his attention.

[Gigeri is about forty leagues from Algiers. Till the year 1664 the
French had a factory there; but then attempting to build a fort on
the sea-coast, to be a check upon the Arabs, they came down from the
mountains, beat the French out of Gigeri, and demolished their fort.
Sir Richard Fanshaw, in a letter to the deputy governor of Tangier,
dated 2nd December, 1664, N.S., says, "We have certain intelligence
that the French have lost Gigheria, with all they had there, and
their fleet come back, with the loss of one considerable ship upon
the rocks near Marseilles."--Fanshaw's Letters, vol. i. p. 347.]

A short time after, the king of England, having resolved also to explore
the African coasts, fitted out a squadron for an expedition to Guinea,
which was to be commanded by Prince Rupert. Those who, from their own
experience, had some knowledge of the country, related strange and
wonderful stories of the dangers attendant upon this expedition that
they would have to fight not only the inhabitants of Guinea, a hellish
people, whose arrows were poisoned, and who never gave their prisoners
better quarter than to devour them, but that they must likewise endure
heats that were insupportable, and rains that were intolerable, every
drop of which was changed into a serpent: that, if they penetrated
farther into the country, they would be assaulted by monsters a thousand
times more hideous and destructive than all the beasts mentioned in the
Revelations.

But all these reports were vain and ineffectual: for so far from
striking terror into those who were appointed to go upon this
expedition, it rather acted as an incentive to glory, upon those who
had no manner of business in it. Jermyn appeared among the foremost of
those; and, without reflecting that the pretence of his indisposition
had delayed the conclusion of his marriage with Miss Jennings, he
asked the duke's permission, and the king's consent to serve in it as a
volunteer.

Some time before this, the infatuation which had imposed upon the fair
Jennings in his favour had begun to subside. All that now inclined
her to this match were the advantages of a settlement. The careless
indolence of a lover, who faintly paid his addresses to her, as