o burn houses,
or blow up magazines. Far and wide they stretch forth their claws of
death; and well might the poor natives call them devils of the night, or
fiends of the clouds. To complete this dreadful scene, the roaring
Congreves ran along the bastion's top, breaking legs and arms with their
shaking tails. Nothing could be more grand to the eye, or more affecting
to the sympathizing heart, than this horrid spectacle. Still, the
superstitious foe were stimulated by some hoary priest with hopes of
victory, thus imbruing their hands in the blood of their children, their
parents, and their friends. Our shells found their way to their very
cells, tearing babes from their mothers' bosoms, and dealing death and
destruction around. Oh! what must be the anguish of a fond mother, to
see nothing but the head of her fondling hanging to her bosom! I will
relate one melancholy case of this kind, out of numbers that came within
my observation, and actually happened at this place.

A female was lying on a bed of green silk; under her head was a pillow
of the same material; her right arm had, no doubt, cradled her babe; and
her left was extended as though for the purpose of keeping her child
close to her. A large shell had perforated the tiled roof, and, having
made its way through three floors, had gone through the foot of the bed,
and penetrated some depth into the fourth floor. A piece of this shell
had gone through the woman's forehead, carrying away a great part of the
head; so that her death, according to the opinion of a medical man who
saw her, must have been instantaneous. The lower part of the child's
body, from the hips downward, was entirely gone; but, strange to say,
its mother's nipple still hung in the left corner of its mouth, and its
little right hand still held by its mother's clothes, which probably it
had grasped at the first noise of the shell. We understood that this
woman was the wife of a most respectable officer in the fort, who had
also met his death some hours before her, and was, therefore, in pity
spared the afflicting sight. Such, reader, are the scenes of war! Such
are the sights which soldiers, in the course of service, are called upon
to witness! The poor woman and her babe were committed to the
grave--probably the first of her generation that ever returned to the
earth as her last home; for she was a Hindoo woman.

The garrison of this fort had been solicited, in the warmest manner, to
send their f