outlet to the Atlantic is fast locked save during two short months of
latest summer. No wonder that the infant colony had hard times in store
for it-hard times, if left to fight its way against winter rigour and
summer: inundation, but doubly hard when the hand of a powerful enemy was
raised to crush it in the first year of its existence. Of this more
before we part. Enough for us now to know: that the little colony, in
spite of opposition, increased and multiplied; people lived in it, were
married in it, and died in it, undisturbed by the busy rush of the
outside world, until, in the last months of 1869, just fifty-seven years
after its formation, it rose in insurrection.

And now, my reader, gentle or cruel, whichsoever you may be, the
positions we have hitherto occupied in these few preliminary pages must
undergo some slight variation. You, if you be gentle, will I trust remain
so until the end; if you be cruel, you will perhaps relent; but for me,
it will be necessary to come forth in the full glory of the individual
"I," and to retain it until we part.

It was about the end of the year 1869 that I became conscious of having
experienced a decided check in life. One day I received from a
distinguished military functionary an intimation to the effect that a
company in Her Majesty's service would be at my disposal, provided I
could produce the sum of 1100 pounds. Some dozen years previous to the
date of this letter I entered the British army, and by the slow process
of existence had reached-a position among the subalterns of the regiment
technically known as first for purchase; but now, when the moment arrived
to turn that position to account, I found that neither the 1100 pounds of
regulation amount nor the 400 pounds of over-regulation items (terms
very familiar now, but soon, I trust, to be for ever obsolete) were
forthcoming, and so it came about that younger hands began to pass me in