with ribbons of all colours, who counted very well the number of their ancestors, but of whom it would have been useless to ask an account of their studies, being called to superior commands, have not been able to shew anything but their orders, and their unskilfulness.  They have done more:  they have had the privilege of losing the vessels and the people of the State, without its being possible for the laws to reach them; and after all, how could a tribunal have condemned them?  They might have replied to their judges, that they had not passed their time in studying the regulations of the service, or the laws of the marine, and that, if they had failed, it was without knowledge or design.  In fact, it would be difficult to suppose that they intended their own destruction; they have but too well proved that they knew how to provide for their own safety.  And what reply could have been made to them, if they had confined their defence to these two points?  We did not appoint ourselves; it is not we who are to blame.

[50] Just as we are going to send this sheet to the press, we learn from the newspapers, that this expedition has failed; that it was not able to proceed above fifty leagues into the interior, and that it returned to Sierra Leone, after having lost several officers, and among them Captain Campbell, who had taken the command after the death of Major Peddy.  Thus the good fall and the Thersites live, and are often even honoured.  Captain Campbell was one of our benefactors, may his manes be sensible to our regret, and may his family and country permit us to mingle with their just affliction, this weak tribute of respect, by which we endeavour as far as lies in our power to discharge the sacred debt of gratitude!

Among the losses which this expedition has experienced, it is feared that we must reckon that of our excellent companion, the Naturalist Kummer; nevertheless, as no positive information of his death has yet been received of his fate, his numerous friends, in the midst of their fears, still cherish some hopes:  May they not be disappointed.

The accounts which inform us of this event, attribute the ill success of the expedition, to the obstacles opposed to it by the natives of the interior, but enter into no details.  We learn from geographers, that up the Rio Grande there lives the warlike nation of the Souucsous, whom some call the Fonllahs of Guinea.  The name of their capital is Teembo.  They are Mahometans, and make war on the idolatrous tribes who surround them, to sell their prisoners.  A remarkable institution, called the Pouarh, seems to have a great resemblance with the ancient secret Tribunal of Germany.  The Pouarh is composed of members who are not admitted among the initiated till they have undergone the most horrible probations.  The association exercises the power of life and death; every body shuns him, whose head it has proscribed.  It may be that it was by this species of government, which seems not to want power, that the English expedition was stopped.