all dine; I go to my cabin at half-past seven, and soon after eight I
am always in bed and the babies fast asleep. The old steward then
comes to my bedside with a large tumbler of porter with a toast in it.
I eat the toast, drink the porter, and usually rest well."

Those two unfortunate children must have landed in England two
miniature Daniel Lamberts. It is pleasant to learn that little George
lived to the age of ninety. Had he not been so stuffed with food in
his youth, he would probably have been a centenarian.

During Nugent's term of office events in Haiti, or San Domingo, as it
was still called then, occasioned him great anxiety. Before the
outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Haiti had been the most
prosperous and the most highly civilised of the West Indian islands.
But after the French National Assembly had, in 1791, decreed equal
rights between whites and mulattoes, troubles began. The blacks
rebelled; the French rescinded the decree of 1791 and, changing their
minds again, re-affirmed it. The blacks began murdering and plundering
the whites, and many planters emigrated to Jamaica and the United
States. That most extraordinary man, Toussaint l'Ouverture, a pure
negro, who had been born a slave, re-established some form of order in
Haiti until Napoleon, when the preliminary articles of the Peace of
Amiens had been signed between Britain and France, hit upon the idea
of employing his soldiers in Haiti, and sent out his brother-in-law,
General Le Clerc, with 25,000 French soldiers to re-conquer the
island. It was a most ill-fated expedition; the soldiers could not
withstand the climate, and died like flies; France losing, from first
to last, no less than 40,000 men from yellow fever. In 1802, Le Clerc,
who seems to have been a great scoundrel, died, and in 1804 Haiti
declared her independence.