patriotism in a
well-balanced mind, it will lead a persons to discover, acknowledge, and
respect, in other communities and other nations, much that is good and
worthy of commendation.

After paying my debts and supplying a few pressing wants I found
remaining in my pocket fifty Spanish dollars. I had emerged from a state
of poverty and dependence. I was rich, having the means, without much
doubt, of procuring a passage from Martinico to some port in the United
States.

Chapter XXXI. SORROWFUL SCENES

It was about the middle of September in the year 1816 that I embarked
with Mr. Budge in a little sloop bound to St. Lucia and Martinico,
after having resided in Grenada nearly four years. We had a few other
passengers, one of whom was a French gentleman named Chambord, who had
fought a duel with an Englishman in St. Lucia a few months before. This
duel grew out of a fierce dispute in relation to the battle of Waterloo,
and the comparative merit, in a military point of view, of Napoleon and
Wellington. The Frenchman, being an adroit swordsman, got the best of
the argument by running his antagonist through the body, and leaving him
senseless, and apparently lifeless, on the field. He made his escape to
Grenada. Having learned that the champion of Wellington was in a fair
way to recover from his wound, he was now on his return to his home.

We tarried but a short time at St. Lucia, merely lying off and on at
the mouth of the port of Castries, or Carenage, which is one of the most
beautiful and safe harbors in that part of the world; the entrance being
so narrow that two ships cannot pass through it abreast; but inside, the
extent of the harbor and depth of water are sufficient to furnish good
anchorage and shelter from hurricanes for a large fleet of ships of the
largest class.

On arriving at St. Pierre I found a fearful hurricane had raged in
that quarter only a week or ten days before. The wind, blowing from the
eastward directly into the open roadstead with irresistible fury, had
driven every vessel in port ashore on the beach. The ship Cato,
of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, having all her cargo discharged, and
presenting a large surface of hull to the wind and the waves, was found,
after the tempest had subsided, high and dry in one of the streets, in a
condition which precluded the possibility of getting her into the water,
and was broken up. Others were launched on "ways" constructed for the
purpose; while som