what I saw with my own eyes. This small portion of
a great scene minutely reproduced will enable you to form
some notion as to the general aspect of the town during the
three days of pillage. Multiply these details ~ad libitum~
and you will get the ensemble.

I had taken refuge by the gate of the town, a puny barrier
made of long laths painted yellow, nailed to cross laths
and sharpened at the top. Near by was a kind of shed in
which some hapless colonists, who had been driven from
their homes, had sought shelter. They were silent and
seemed to be petrified in all the attitudes of despair. Just
outside of the shed an old man, weeping, was seated on the
trunk of a mahogany tree which was lying on the ground
and looked like the shaft of a column. Another vainly
sought to restrain a white woman who, wild with fright,
was trying to flee, without knowing where she was going,
through the crowd of furious, ragged, howling negroes.

The negroes, however, free, victorious, drunk, mad, paid
not the slightest attention to this miserable, forlorn group
of whites. A short distance from us two of them, with
their knives between their teeth, were slaughtering an ox,
upon which they were kneeling with their feet in its blood.
A little further on two hideous negresses, dressed as
marchionesses, covered with ribbons and pompons, their
breasts bare, and their heads encumbered with feathers and
laces, were quarrelling over a magnificent dress of Chinese
satin, which one of them had grasped with her nails while
the other hung on to it with her teeth. At their feet a