ortunately had a nervous
affection of the head. He asked me several questions respecting the
different islands, and appeared amused by my description of them. After we
had refitted we sailed for Honduras, the Admiral first taking from me the
master, without appointing another, for which I did not thank him. We made
the Swan Islands, which are small, uninhabited, and surrounded by a reef
of coral, and on the morning of the third day anchored off the town at the
mouth of the Belize river. Colonel Drummond, who was the commanding
officer, received us very civilly, and requested I would dine with him as
often as I could. A deputation of the merchants waited on me to say the
convoy would be ready in a fortnight. I dined frequently at the military
mess, and found the officers generally gentlemanly. I gave two parties on
board, but as I had no music there was no dancing. We revelled in
Calepache and Calapee, and I think some of the city aldermen would have
envied us the mouthfuls of green fat we swallowed. I made an excursion up
the river with Colonel Drummond in a scow, a flat boat so called, or
rather float, and slept at a pavilion he had on the bank of it. I shall
never forget my nocturnal visitors, the bull-frogs, who, _sans facon_,
jumped about the room as if dancing a quadrille, not to my amusement but
their own, making a most unmusical noise to the tune of something like,
"Pay your debts, pay your debts, pay your debts." After the third croak
they paused, probably to give time for everybody to become honest. I made
daily excursions to the neighbouring quays, and picked up a quantity of
beautiful shells.

Dining one day with Colonel Drummond, I remarked that the black servant
who stood near me had a piebald neck, and mentioned it as something
singular. "Why," said the Colonel, "thereby hangs a very curious tale, and
not a pleasant one to him, poor fellow. He is a native of Panama, and
formerly was employed to float rafts of mahogany down the Belize river. He
is an expert canoe-man and something of a carpenter, and as he was a free
man I took him into my household. At my request he related to me the cause
of those white marks on his neck. It was thus. As he and another black man
were floating down the river on a large raft of mahogany, it being Sunday
he wished to bathe, and jumped into the river for that purpose. As he was
swimming after the raft, which was close to the mangroves, and had nearly
reached it, a large alliga