rg. Gideon Jas. Wm. Griffith, 3rd W.I.R., died of yellow fever
at Lucia, 26th Aug., 1853, aet. 23.

Also, Selina Maria, wife of Capt. C.S.H. Hingston, 3rd W.I.R., died at
Up Park Camp, 11th April, 1854, aet. 23.

Erected by the officers of the 1st and 3rd W.I. Regts.

]

CHAPTER XXI.

THE TWO EXPEDITIONS TO MALAGEAH, 1854 AND 1855.

The troops that had been despatched from Sierra Leone and the Gambia for
the relief of Christiansborg, returned to Sierra Leone, in H.M.S.
_Prometheus_, on the 25th of November, 1854, and in consequence of the
hostile attitude assumed by the chiefs of the Mellicourie and Scarcies
Rivers, and the outrages committed by natives on mercantile factories in
those rivers, the Governor of Sierra Leone decided to detain the
contingent which had been sent from the Gambia, in order to have a
sufficient force to overawe the chief of Malageah, the principal
offender, and compel him to sign a treaty of trade. With this view,
accordingly, detachments of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd West India Regiments,
numbering in all 401 officers and men, under the command of Captain
Rookes, 2nd West India Regiment, embarked in H.M.S. _Prometheus_ and
_Dover_, on the 2nd of December, and sailed for the Mellicourie River,
on which the town of Malageah is situated. The officers of the 1st West
India Regiment who accompanied the expedition were Captain R.D.
Fletcher, Lieutenant Connell, Lieutenant Strachan, and Ensign Anderson.

On December 4th, the expedition arrived off Malageah, and the
river-banks having been reconnoitred, Captain Heseltine, of H.M.S.
_Britomart_, who had been appointed diplomatic agent with powers to
negotiate, directed a landing to be made. The troops disembarked, and
meeting with no opposition, advanced on the town, seizing and occupying
the mosque and the king's house, while a second body took possession of
all the approaches to the town. By these means, a party of some 200
chiefs and Marabouts, who filled the mosque, were surrounded.

In the meantime, the 1st Division, under Captain R. D'Oyley Fletcher,
1st West India Regiment, had proceeded to a creek to the eastward of the
town, which they ascended in the boats of the _Britomart_, and then
crossing by bye-paths through the swamp and bush to the back of the
town, where they dispersed a body of 150 natives armed with rifles and
muskets, they joined the main body before the mosque.

Negotiations were opened by the diplomatic agent, a