Rhine, where an old monastery was fitted up as an hospital for the British sick.

Sometime after reaching this place, a person came on board the galliot to see if there were any amongst the newly arrived sick, with whom he was acquainted. He came down below, and after looking round was about going away, when I made what effort I could for some one to stop him. He had looked at me amongst the rest, but I was so much reduced and altered in appearance that he had not recognised me, but passed by, although he had once known me very well. When brought back, he soon recollected me, and feelingly expressed great regret at finding his old acquaintance in such a weak condition. He had been a patient in this hospital himself, and when restored to health again, being found an active and useful person, he was retained as a ward-master for the benefit of others. Having had the fever, he was tolerably well acquainted with the best mode of treating it; and soon after finding me, he administered a small quantity of strong cordial, which had the desired effect for a short time, by enabling me to get on shore. With his assistance I was conveyed to the hospital, where he soon procured one of the surgeons to examine me, and being very desirous to render every assistance in his power, he suggested to him the propriety of giving some particular medicine, which had often proved useful in bad cases; to which the surgeon replied, not aware that I heard all that was passing between them, he will not want any thing long.' By this it was evident that mine was considered a hopeless case; which could not be wondered at, the disorder having been so fatal, that those who had recovered were said not to average more than one in fifty; and as my attack had been so long neglected, the conclusion was reasonable, although it did not prove correct. In a few days I was so much recruited as to be able to walk about the town: but it was a distinguishing characteristic of this complaint, that having once had it, was no security whatever against a second attack,-and that those who got well through it the first, or perhaps the second time, were frequently its victims on the third encounter. I found by experience that this report was not without foundation, for

instead of being fully restored to health again, as for the first few days seemed probable, the disorder returned a second time, and with much more violent symptoms. As a state of high delirium soon came on, I was but a short time sensible of what transpired, after the application of a large blister; except the workings of a terrified imagination, some of the impressions of which, even at this distance of time, are not wholly obliterated from my memory,--so deeply and strongly were they engraven. From the treatment which followed when no longer delirious, the disorder must have been of the nature of typhus,―as at one time a liberal allowance per day, of equal parts of brandy and port wine was given me, as hot as could well be taken. How long this continued I am not aware, but I was confined to my bed for such a length of time, as to be wholly unable to move in any direction from extreme weakness; and so generally was this the case in this disorder, that a man was appointed in every ward to go round occasionally, to turn from one side to the other, such of the patients as were incapable of turning themselves.

I was at length brought so near the brink of the grave, that, to all appearance, no alteration for the better could be expected. I am not aware that I had even a wish to live; but my mind was so reconciled to the prospect of death, which then seemed near and inevitable, that I had given my watch into the hands of the person who had visited the galliot, with a request, that he would inform my family where I had ended my days. Indeed, when some expectation of recovery was at last held out, I could not help looking forward with a feeling of regret, to the probability of having again to encounter the series of hardships and distress, to which I should unavoidably be subjected. As I regained a little strength, I began to take notice of the state of things around me; and having daily heard a noise like that of a carpenter's shop, I now ascertained the cause to be the nailing up of the coffins, each day, of those who had died in the last twenty-four hours; and I found that the dead-house, or place where the dead were deposited previously to interment, when taken out of the wards, being opposite the windows of the room I was in,

afforded full opportunity for my beholding the striking and affecting scene, which could not fail to excite feelings of horror and dismay, in one so much enervated by the very disease, which I now witnessed to be so fatal to others. The average

number of deaths was twenty-seven in a day and night; but sometimes the number so increased, that the Dutch could not furnish coffins sufficient for the demand of the day; and then the method of sewing up the bodies in the bedding they had occupied, was resorted to. Several waggon loads of bodies were carried off every afternoon for interment.*

When able to walk about the room with the assistance of my stick, it happened that the regiment to which I belonged, was quartered in a village about two miles from the bank of the Rhine, opposite to that on which the hospital stood. Some of the officers came over to ascertain for themselves, whether any of the missing from their regiment were amongst the sick; at length they came into the ward where I was, and the second in command, with whom I was well acquainted, being with them, I requested his help to get me liberated from the hospital,-telling him, that I had no chance of becoming thoroughly well whilst in it, and of the danger to which I was constantly exposed of having another relapse. He immediately applied to some of the medical staff on duty, and conducted them to me through the wards; but it ended in his informing me, that the doctors could not suffer my going out until farther recovered, as I was quite unfit for exposure. Not knowing how long I might be detained, I was now determined to make my escape on the first opportunity; and the next day being remarkably fine, I walked out two or three times into the air, though with much difficulty. The following morning I met with a person belonging to the regiment, who was going to join it again the same afternoon; and as we were well acquainted, I did not hesitate to disclose my intention of quitting the

* The accounts of the deplorable treatment of the sick, and of the disasters of the British army in their retreat to Bremen, as given in the Annual Register of 1795, more than confirm the description of the author of this biographical sketch.

hospital in a clandestine manner, and resolved to accompany him, if possible.

I returned again to the hospital as at other times; and in the afternoon, as if going to take another walk, I proceeded to the river side; and the ferry boat being just ready for setting off, I got into it undiscovered, and passed the Rhine, arriving at the village of Kesterne soon after dark the same evening, without taking cold, although the river was thickly frozen over, and a passage cut through the ice, to allow the ferry boat to cross backwards and forwards. From this time I rapidly gathered strength, and at the end of a week was so much recruited, as to venture back to the hospital to see how those fared, whom I had left behind; at the same time, it is very probable, to show how I had fared myself; without any fear of being detained, as I was evidently much stronger than when under their roof. To lessen the fatigue, I procured a horse for the excursion, and proceeded accordingly towards the river side. The risk I then ran, however unwarrantable, afforded me another opportunity of seeing the effect of a renewed attack of this dreadful disorder, upon a Scotch sergeant of the Highland watch, who had had the fever twice, and both times recovered from it. He was a very stout man, and when I left the hospital, appeared in perfect health and strength. In the interval of my absence, he had been seized with it a third time, and when I saw him, had nearly finished his course; he was speechless, and survived but a short time afterwards I think this last time, he was ill only three days. Although I escaped any farther infection, yet I was punished for my temerity before getting back again to Kesterne. After crossing the river in the boat, I had to pass through a small sheet of shallow water which had been frozen, but was then broken up by the loaded waggons that passed that way. On getting up to it, I found it in a half frozen state, the old ice not being sufficiently strongly united again to bear the horse, which refused to pass it; and on my urging him forward, he lay down with me in the water. It was with difficulty that I could extricate myself from him, and it is doubtful whether I should have succeeded, without the assistance of another per

son then at hand. In this wet condition I had a long distance to go, in a keen frosty night, in an open waggon, which the day following threatened a renewal of my illness; but by the timely use of medicines, I was favoured, not according to my desert, to escape without any serious indisposition.

In looking back at the marvellous manner in which I was sustained through all this conflict, and again restored as one brought back from the dead, I cannot avoid adverting to that period of my illness, when my mind felt so reconciled to the prospect of death, as before-mentioned; and I now fully believe, from what I have since been mercifully favoured to experience, that so far from being in any degree prepared for such an awful event, a deceptive feeling must have been superinduced by the state of torpor and insensibility in which I then was, and which totally benumbed any better feelings and desires as to the future. To this may be added a predominating fear, of having to endure more of those sufferings, of which I had had no small share; which, the probability of being again restored to health seemed to banish every hope of escaping. Truly awful is the thought which this view of my then lost condition occasions, when I contemplate the woe and misery which must have been my eternal portion, if unutterable mercy and long-suffering had been withdrawn; and if the soul had been required of one, who had witnessed no repentance towards God the Judge of all, except what at times the fear of punishment had extorted; and who was a stranger to that saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, as the "Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world,"-without which, his precious blood would have been shed in vain for me :-I should thus have died in my sins, which unrepented of, would have followed after to judgment, in terrible array against my guilty soul—and yet when my end was apparently so near and inevitable, if such questions as are frequently proposed on the like occasions had been put to me, I have little doubt, but satisfactory answers would have been returned, as to my belief and hope in the essential truths of the gospel. But alas! this would have been from hearsay and traditional report, and not from any heartfelt

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