as no means to efface its injustice but to persist in it, no
secret to repair its wrongs, but to aggravate them?

[45] Three men saved from the raft, died in a very short time;
those who crossed the desert, being too weak to go to Daccard, were in
considerable numbers in this same hospital, and perished there
successively.

[46] Major Peddy had fought against the French in the Antilles and
in Spain; the bravery of our soldiers, and the reception given him in
France at the time of our disasters, had inspired him with the greatest
veneration for our countrymen, who had, on more than one occasion, shewn
themselves generous towards him.

[47] The Governor, who it seems did not like the sight of the
unfortunate, had, however, no reason to fear that it would too much affect
his sensibility. He had elevated himself above the misfortunes of life, at
least, when they did not affect himself, to a degree of impassibility,
which would have done honor to the most austere stoic and which, doubtless,
indicates the head of a statesman, in which superior interests, and the
thought of the public good, leave no room for vulgar interests, for mean
details, for care to be bestowed on the preservation of a wretched
individual. Thus, when the death of some unhappy Frenchman was announced to
him, this news no further disturbed his important meditations than to make
him say to his secretary, "Write, that Mr. such a one is dead."

The governor is, at the bottom, doubtless, a man not destitute of
sensibility; for example, he never passed by the king's picture (if any
strangers were present) but he shed tears of emotion. But his great
application to business, the numerous occupations, the divers enterprises
which have agitated his life, have, if we may so express it, so long
distracted his thoughts that he has at length felt the necessity of
concentrating them wholly in himself.

We cannot here become the historians of the governor; we do not know
whether his modesty will ever permit him to publish the memoirs of his
life; but the public who know, or easily may know, that having been an
apothecary in Bengal, a physician in Madagascar, a dealer in small wares,
and land-surveyor in Java, a shopkeeper's clerk in the isle of France and
Holland, an engineer in the camp of Batavia, commandant at Guadaloupe,
chief of a bureau at Paris, he has succeeded after passing through all
these channels, in obtaining the orders of St. Louis, and the Legion of