when Stedman came sailing, amid orange-blossoms and music, up the winding
Surinam.

Our young officer went into the woods in the condition of Falstaff,
"heinously unprovided." Coming from the unbounded luxury of the
plantations, he found himself entering "the most horrid and impenetrable
forests, where no kind of refreshment was to be had,"--he being
provisioned only with salt pork and pease. After a wail of sorrow for
this inhuman neglect, he bursts into a gush of gratitude for the private
generosity which relieved his wants at the last moment by the following
list of supplies: "24 bottles best claret, 12 ditto Madeira, 12 ditto
porter, 12 ditto cider, 12 ditto rum, 2 large loaves white sugar, 2
gallons brandy, 6 bottles muscadel, 2 gallons lemon-juice, 2 gallons
ground coffee, 2 large Westphalia hams, 2 salted bullocks' tongues, 1
bottle Durham mustard, 6 dozen spermaceti candles." The hams and tongues
seem, indeed, rather a poor halfpennyworth to this intolerable deal of
sack; but this instance of Surinam privation in those days may open some
glimpse at the colonial standards of comfort. "From this specimen,"
moralizes our hero, "the reader will easily perceive, that, if some of
the inhabitants of Surinam show themselves the disgrace of the creation
by their cruelties and brutality, others, by their social feelings,
approve themselves an ornament to the human species. With this instance
of virtue and generosity I therefore conclude this chapter."

But the troops soon had to undergo worse troubles than those of the
commissariat. The rainy season had just set in. "As for the negroes,"
said Mr. Klynhaus, the last planter with whom they parted, "you may
depend on never seeing a soul of them, unless they attack you off guard;
but the climate, the climate, will murder you all." Bringing with them
constitutions already impaired by the fevers and dissipation of