int, arrived
in which we once more felt the breeze and the sails were again set, the
boat heading about south-east, close-hauled on the port tack, toward
what eventually proved to be an island of very fair size, fringed with
the inevitable mangroves, but heavily timbered, as to its interior, with
magnificent trees of several descriptions, among which I distinguished
several very fine specimens of the _bombax_. Handsomely weathering this
island, with a few fathoms to spare, and standing on until we could
weather a small, low-lying island to windward of us on the next tack, we
then hove about and stood for the northern shore of the lagoon, by that
time some five miles distant, finally shooting in between the mainland
and an island nearly two miles long, upon which stood the slave factory
that our lads had captured earlier in the day. The whole surface of
this island, except a narrow belt along its southern shore, had been
completely cleared of vegetation; and upon the cleared space had been
erected two enormous barracoons and, as Purchase had said, a regular
village of well-constructed, stone-built houses raised on massive piers
of masonry, and with broad galleries and verandahs all round them,
evidently intended for the occupation of the slave-dealers and their
dependants. A fine timber wharf extended along the entire northern side
of the island, with massive bollards sunk into the soil at regular
intervals for ships to make fast to; half a dozen trunk buoys occupied
the middle of the fairway; and the whole settlement was completely
screened from prying eyes by the heavy belt of standing timber that had
been left undisturbed on the southern shore of the island. I had
thought that the factory on the Camma Lagoon represented the last word
in the construction of slave-dealing establishments; but this concern
was quite twice as extensive, and more elaborately complete in every
respect.

By the time that we invalids were landed it was close upon sunset, and
under Purchase's guidance we were all conducted up to the largest house
in the place, where, in one of the rooms, Murdoch was still hard at work
attending to the batch of patients that were the result of that day's
work. We, the new arrivals, however, were shepherded into another room,
where fairly comfortable beds were arranged along the two sides, and
into these beds the worst cases were at once put and turned over to
Murdoch's care, while Hutchinson promptly pulled