ragments. The view of the town library filled me with lively
concern. The volumes were tossed about and defaced with the utmost
wantonness; and, if they happened to bear any resemblance to Bibles,
they were torn in pieces and trampled on. The collection of natural
curiosities next caught my eye. Plants, seeds, dried birds, insects,
and drawings were scattered about in great confusion, and some of the
sailors were in the act of killing a beautiful musk-cat, which they
afterwards ate. Every house was full of Frenchmen, who were hacking, and
destroying, and tearing up everything which they could not convert to
their own use. The destruction of live stock on this and the following
day was immense. In my yard alone they killed fourteen dozen of fowls,
and there were not less than twelve hundred hogs shot in the town." It
was unsafe to walk in the streets of Freetown during the forty-eight
hours that followed its capture, because the French crews, with too much
of the Company's port wine in their heads to aim straight, were firing
at the pigs of the poor freedmen over whom they had achieved such a
questionable victory.

To readers of Erckmann-Chatrian it is unpleasant to be taken thus behind
the curtain on which those skilful artists have painted the wars of the
early Revolution. It is one thing to be told how the crusaders of '93
and '94 were received with blessings and banquets by the populations to
whom they brought freedom and enlightenment, and quite another to read
the journal in which a quiet accurate-minded Scotchman tells us how
a pack of tipsy ruffians sat abusing Pitt and George to him, over a
fricassee of his own fowls, and among the wreck of his lamps and mirrors
which they had smashed as a protest against aristocratic luxury.

"There is not a boy among them who has not learnt to accompany the name
of Pitt with an execration. When I went to bed, there was no sleep to be
had on account of the sentinels thinking fit to amuse me the whole night
through with the revenge they meant to take on him when they got him to
Paris. Next morning I went on board the 'Experiment.' The Commodore and
all his officers messed together, and I was admitted among them. They
are truly the poorest-looking people I ever saw. Even the Commodore
has only one suit which can at all distinguish him, not to say from the
officers, but from the men. The filth and confusion of their meals was
terrible. A chorus of boys usher in the dinner with the