juncture favoured with a visit by the king of Legibelli;
but very little pains were taken to dismiss this potentate in good
humour, or maintain the disposition he professed to favour the commerce
of Great Britain. True it is, he was desirous of engaging the English in
his quarrels with some neighbouring nations; and such engagements were
cautiously and politically avoided, because it was the interest of
Great Britain to be upon good terms with every African prince who could
promote and extend the commerce of her subjects.

SHIPWRECK OF CAPTAIN BARTON.

Commodore Keppel having reduced Goree, and reinforced the garrison of
Senegal, returned to England, where all his ships arrived, after a
very tempestuous voyage, in which the squadron had been dispersed.
This expedition, however successful in the main, was attended with one
misfortune, the loss of the Lichfield ship of war, commanded by captain
Barton, which, together with one transport and a bomb-tender, was
wrecked on the coast of Barbary, about nine leagues to the northward
of Saffy, in the dominions of Morocco. One hundred and thirty men,
including several officers, perished on this occasion; but the captain
and the rest of the company, to the number of two hundred and twenty,
made shift to reach the shore, where they ran the risk of starving, and
were cruelly used by the natives, although a treaty of peace at that
time subsisted between Great Britain and Morocco; nay, they were even
enslaved by the emperor, who detained them in captivity until they were
ransomed by the British government: so little dependence can be placed
on the faith of such barbarian princes, with whom it is even a disgrace
for any civilized nation to be in alliance, whatever commercial
advantages may arise from the connexion.

GALLANT EXPLOIT OF CAPTAIN TYRREL.

The incidents of the war that happened in the West Indies, during these
occurrences, may be reduced to a small compass. Nothing extraordinary
was achieved in the neighbourhood of Jamaica, where admiral Coats
commanded a small squadron, from which he detached cruisers occasionally
for the protection of the British commerce; and at Antigua the trade was
effectually secured by the vigilance of captain Tyrrel, whose courage
and activity were equal to his conduct and circumspection. In the month
of March, this gentleman, with his own ship the Buckingham, and the
Cambridge, another of the line, demolished a fort on the island of