strewed with types, and papers, and leaves of books; and I had
the mortification to see a great part of my own labour, and of
the labour of others, for several years totally destroyed. At the
other end of the house I found telescopes, hygrometers,
barometers, thermometers, and electrical machines, lying about in
fragments. 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