had been saved from the wreck were collected all together along with me.

In this state we remained till it was dark. A Lascar belonging to the vessel, perceiving that my nakedness gave me great concern, tore into two a piece of cloth which he had tied round his waist, and gave me one part of it, which afforded a short apron. This simple act of a poor, uninformed black man, whom Christian charity would call an idolator, methought had more of the true and essential spirit of charity in it, than half the ostentatious, parading newspaper public charities of London-the slough of purse-proud vanity, and unwieldy bloated wealth. Of all the acts of beneficence that I ever met with, it struck me the most forcibly: it had kindness, disinterestedness, and delicacy, for its basis; and I have never since thought of it without wishing that I could meet the man, to reward him for his beneficence with a subsistence for life. The lower order of people of a certain country, I know, would think a man in such circumstances as I was then in, a fitter object of pleasantry than pity.

The vast quantity of salt water I had swallowed, still made me deadly sick in the stomach: however, after some time, I threw it up, and got great relief. I had scarcely felt the comfortable effects of this, before I was ordered to march : nine of us, all Lascars except myself, were conveyed to a village at a few miles distance on the sea-side, where we were for the night put into a square place, walled round, open to the inclemency of the weather above and below, and filled with large logs of wood; it blew most violently, and the rain fell in torrents-while not one smooth plank could be found on which to stretch our fatigued and wasted bodies. Thus, naked, sick, exhausted with fatigue and fasting, drenched with wet, and unable to lie down, our misery might be supposed to be incapable of increase. But, alas! where are the bounds which we can set to human woe?--Thrist, that most dreadful of pains, occasioned by the drenching with salt water, seized us: we begged, we entreated, we clamoured, for water; but the inhuman wretches, deaf to the groans and screeches of their fellow-creatures, (for some grew delirious with the agony of

thirst), refused them even the cheap and miserable indulgence of a drop of water!

Indeed, a night of more exquisite horror cannot be imagined. The thoughts of being a prisoner to Hyder Aly, was, of itself, sufficient to render me completely unhappy: but my utter want of clothes almost put me beside myself; and lying exposed to the open air, where I was glad to sit close to the Lascars to receive a little heat from their bodies, and to hold open my mouth in order to catch a drop of the descending rain, was a state that might be considered as the highest refinement upon misery.

'About four o'clock in the morning, a little cold rice was brought us to eat, and water was dug out of a hole near the spot for us; but as all things in this life are good or bad merely relatively, this wretched fare was some refreshment to us. I was then removed to the ruins of a toddy-hut, (a small temporary hut, where toddy, a liquor extracted from the cocoa nut tree, is sold), separated from the rest, and a guard set over me. Here I had full room for reflection, and could "meditate e'en to madness." The whole of my situation appeared before me with all its aggravating circumstances of horror; and to any one who considers it, I believe it will appear that it was hardly possible to fill the bitter cup of calamity fuller.

In this state I was, when, to my utter astonishment, and to my no less joy, the amiable companion of my shipwreck, Mr. Hall, appeared before me. I scarcely knew how to think his appearance reality, as I understood that the Lascars (natives of India, employed as sailors, &c.) then along with me were all that were saved from the wreck; and he was, at the time I parted from him, so exhausted both in body and mind, that I thought he would be the last who could escape. He, however, shook me by the hand; and, sitting down, told me that he had given me up for lost, and remained with the vessel until the sea, having ebbed, left her almost dry--that, immediately on getting ashore, and being taken prisoner, he made inquiries about me, and heard that I had been savedthat, finding this, his joy was such as to make him almost

forget his own misfortunes--and, exerting all his entreaties not to be separated from me, they had been so far indulgent to him, and had brought him to me, that we might be companions in bondage. He added that out of 11 Europeans and 56 Lascars who were on board, only he and I of the former, and 14 of the latter, were saved from the wreck, the rest having been drowned in the attempt, excepting some who, overcome with terror, anguish and anxiety, and exhausted with fatigue, had bid a formal adieu to their companions, let go their hold, and calmly and voluntarily given themselves up to the deep.

Perceiving that he stood as much in need of relief as I did when the Lascar relieved me by dividing his cloth, I took mine off, tore it in two, and gave him half of it: you may well conceive our misery from this, if other circumstances were wanting, that such a thing as a rag of linen, not worth six pence, was a very material accommodation to us both.

Mr. Hall and I endeavoured with all our might to stem the headlong torrent of our fate.----Melancholy preyed deeply and openly upon him, while I concealed mine, and endeavoured to cheer the sinking spirits of that noble youth, who, I perceived, was the prey rather of extreme sensibility than feebleness of mind. All the horrors of shivering nakedness, though, to a mind delicate like his, and a person reared in the lap of luxury, sufficiently goading, appeared as nothing when compared with one loss he had sustained in the depredations with which shipwreck is constantly followed up. In the cruel suspense between life and death, which I have already described, previous to my getting on shore, this amiable young man had secured and treasured next his heart, as the inseparable companion of his fate, a miniature picture of a young lady: it hung round his neck, and was, by the unfeeling villains who seized him on his landing, taken away. This cruel deprivation was an incessant corrosive to his mind-the copious source of anguish to his heart-the hourly theme of the most pathetic, afflicting exclamations. "Had I," he would cry, "oh! had I had but the good fortune to have gone to the bottom while yet it hung about my neck, I should have been

happy: but now, separated from the heavenly original, and bereft of the precious image, what is life? what would be life were I yet sure of it? What pleasure, what common content, has the world left for me? None--oh! none, none! Never shall this heart again know comfort!"

For some days we lay in this place, exposed to the weather, without even the slender comfort of a little straw to cover the ground beneath us--our food, boiled rice, served very sparingly twice a-day by an old woman, who just threw a handful or more of it to each upon a very dirty board, which we devoured with those spoons Nature gave us.

At the end of that time, we, and, along with us, the Lascars, were ordered to proceed into the country, and drove on foot to a considerable distance, in order to render up an account of ourselves to persons belonging to government, authorized to take it. It was advanced in the morning when we moved, without receiving any sort of sustenance; and were marched in that wasting climate eight hours, without breaking our fast; during which time we were exposed alternately to the scorching heat of the sun and heavy torrents of rain, which raised painful blisters on our skin: we had often to stand exposed to the weather, or to lie down, under the pressure of fatigue and weakness, on the bare ground; then wait an hour, or more, at the door of some insolent, unfeeling monster, until he finished his dinner, or took his afternoon's nap; and when this was over, drove forward with wanton barbarity by the people who attended us.

Two days after this, we were moved again, and marched up the country by a long and circuitous route, in which we underwent every hardship that cruelty could inflict, or human fortitude endure--now blistered with the heat, now drenched with the rain, and now chilled with the night damps---destitute of any place but the bare earth to rest or lay our heads on, with only a scanty pittance of boiled rice for our support---often without water to quench our thirst, and constantly goaded by the guards, who pricked us with their bayonets every now and then, at once to evince their power, entertain the spectators, and mortify us. We arrived at Hydernagur,

the metropolis of the province of Biddanorea fort of considerable strength, mounting upwards of 70 guns, containing a large garrison of men, and possessed of immense wealth.

It was about two o'clock in the morning when we arrived at Biddanore: the day was extremely hot, and we were kept out under the full heat of that broiling sun until six o'clock in the evening, before we were admitted to an audience of the jemadar, or governor of the place, without having a mouthful of victuals offered to us after the fatiguing march of the morning.

'While we stood in this forlorn state, a vast concourse of people collected about, and viewed us with curiosity. Looking round through those who stood nearest, I observed some men gazing at me with strong marks of emotion, and a mixture of wonder and concern pourtrayed in their countenances.—— Surprised to see such symptoms of humanity in a Mysore Indian, I looked at them with more scrutinizing attention, and thought that their faces were familiar to me. Catching my eye, they looked at me significantly, as though they would express their regard and respect for me, if they dared; and I then began to recollect that they were formerly privates in my regiment of cavalry, and were then prisoners at large with Hyder.

'I was not less surprised that those poor fellows should recognise me in my present miserable fallen state, than effected at the sympathetic feeling they disclosed. I returned their look with a private nod of recognition; but, seeing that they were afraid to speak to me, and fearing I might injure them by disclosing our acquaintance, I forbore any thing more. The guilty souls of despotic governments are perpetually alive to suspicion: every look alarms them; and alarm or suspicion never fails to be followed up with proscription or death.

'While we stood in the court, waiting to be brought before the jemadar, we presented a spectacle that would have wrung pity, one would think, from the heart of a tiger, if a tiger was endued with reflection. At length we were summoned to appear before him, and brought into his presence. I had made up my mind for the occasion-determined to deport