RAVAGES OF FEVER. 353 



valided on account of wounds received in an 

 engagement at Epe ; Captain Mulliner, com- 

 manding the garrison, died; the Chief Magis- 

 trate Watson and another law officer died ; 

 whilst the collector of customs, the treasurer, the 

 stipendiary magistrate, and two colonial surgeons, 

 have all returned invalided to England. Other 

 officers of the garrison, with HoUingsworth, of 

 H.M.S. " Prometheus," and over twenty of his 

 men, are laid in the sand ; and in four months, out 

 of a crew of a hundred white men, only sixteen 

 were left, the rest having died or been invalided. 

 Here Captain Jones, a most energetic young 

 officer, died ; whilst the celebrated traveller, Doctor 

 Baikie, a man of iron constitution, who had resided 

 for years some hundreds of miles up the Niger, 

 succumbed from fever, caught in this fatal climate. 

 Out of a garrison of about two hundred men of 

 a "West India Regiment, there were scarcely ever 

 a single officer and fifty men available for duty ; 

 the West Indian black being almost as susceptible 

 to fever as the white man. 



It might be supposed that this colony, which has 

 2 A 



