58 THE GERMAN SETTLER. 



Von Hantz thus — a prefixture she had not failed to 

 note as dignifying the names of several among their 

 neighbours. But alas, the mutability of this world ! 

 The retreats of Buonaparte from Moscow, and Liep- 

 sig and Dresden came ; and brought ruin in their 

 train. The little peasant eloped from him with a 

 French dragoon, who was billetted on them, and the 

 splendour of whose cuirass she found irresistible : 

 she was drowned presently after in crossing the 

 Rhine ; and Ludwig Hantz, packing up what few 

 meubles the war had left, sent them, together with 

 the only infant his faithless partner had borne him, 

 to his mother, who, with her elder son, still occupied 

 the ancestorial smithy. In short, he enlisted in the 

 Danish line, and after eight years service found him- 

 self in garrison at Sainte Croix, in the West Indies. 

 Here an incident occurred which in its issue 

 brought me acquainted with Carl Ludwig Hantz 

 and his story. The old mulatto woman who kept, 

 she still keeps, the canteen that lies just within the 

 barrier as you enter the fort at the West-end of St. 

 Croix, had a daughter, called Miss O'Hagan : her 

 father was drum-major O'Hagan, belonging to an 

 Irish regiment of foot, garrisoned there when the 

 Island was in our hands. Beside some valuable 

 trinkets, picked up in more than one well foughten 

 field, and bequeathed to his child on the regiment 

 being ordered home ; an uncle of hers a man of 

 colour, left her, at his death, the good will of the 

 aforesaid canteen, and a great many solid pieces of 

 eight. Of these the old mulatto could be brought 

 to render no account whatever. By the Danish law 

 women are wards until marriage ; but the people of 

 colour at West-end all thought it shame that Miss 

 O'Hagan, now with the bloom of more than twenty 

 summers about her, and that in the precocious little 

 island of St. Croix, should be cabined, cribbed and 

 confined, in wish and expenses by her mother. 

 These reflections were of no great avail in themselves ; 

 only they seriously inclined her to the sole remedy 



