look like a
fleet, and depart in the middle of August, under escort of a
king's ship, commissioned to pay the droits and customs to the
Negro princes of the interior, with whom that colony is
connected.]

Such a circumstance could not fail to affect us much; for the few
resources we possessed made us anticipate an event almost as horrible as
the shipwreck, which exposed our family to all the horrors of want in
the boundless deserts of Sahara. My father, however, having nothing with
which he could reproach himself, courageously supported this new
misfortune, hoping sooner or later to be able to unmask those who had
urged his ruin. He wrote a letter to his Excellency the Minister of
Marine, in which he detailed the affairs of the office of the colony,
the regularity of the accounts, the unfortunate condition to which his
numerous family were reduced by the loss of his employment, and
concluded with these words:--"Broken without being heard, at the end of
twenty-nine years of faithful service, but too proud to make me afraid
of a disgrace which cannot but be honourable to me, especially as it has
its source in those philanthropic principles which I manifested in the
abandoning of the raft of the Medusa, I resign myself in silence to my
destiny."

This letter, full of energy, although a little too firm, failed not to
affect the feeling heart of the Minister of Marine, who wrote to the
governor of Senegal to give my father some employment in the
administration of the colony. But that order had either remained too
long in the office of the minister, or the governor of Senegal had
judged it proper not to communicate the good news to us, as we did not
hear of the order of the minister till after the death of my father,
nearly fifteen months after its date.

When my father had rendered his accounts, and installed his successor
into the colony's office, he told me it would be quite necessary to
think of returning into his island of Safal, to cultivate it ourselves.
He persuaded me that our plantation suffered solely from the want of our
personal care, and that the happiness and tranquillity of a country life
would soon make us forget our enemies and our sufferings. It was then
decided that I should set off on the morrow, with two of my brothers, to
go and cultivate the cotton at the plantation. We took our little
shallop, and two negro sailors, and, by daybreak, were upon the river,
leaving at Senegal my fath