1 2 Concerning Kingsleys in General i 



were for generations planters in Barbados and 

 Demerara. Histories of the globe, and lordly folios, 

 on whose maps full many a sturdy coast-line dwindled 

 into dots — full many a line of dots went stumbling 

 on to perish at the feet of pregnant nothingness. 

 Volume on volume of famous voyagers — Dampier, 

 Rogers, Shelrocke, Byron, Cook, and grand old 

 Esquemeling — the Froissart of the Buccaneers — and 

 respectable Captain Charles Johnson, deeply interested 

 and very properly shocked at ' the Robberies and 

 Murders of the most Notorious Pyrates.' Truly ' to 

 the southwards many wondrous isles, many strange 

 fishes, many monstrous Patagones withdrew their 

 senses. And dearer, perhaps, than these to the boys 

 were the journals of old General Kingsley, who had 

 served as an aide-de-camp at Dettingen and Fontenoy, 

 and whose regiment had fought with desperate valour 

 in the rose-gardens of Minden, and of their grand- 

 father Nathaniel Lucas, who had seen the Count de 

 Grasse surrender his sword to Rodney on the deck 

 of the Formidable after the action off the island of St. 

 Lucia on the 12th of April 1792, and had witnessed 

 from afar the awful irruption of the soufriere of St. 

 Vincent in 1 8 1 2, and who was the friend of many of 

 the leading men of learning and science of his time. 

 If it be true that Waterloo was won on the 

 playing-fields of Eton, it is true that Westward Ho I 

 was made in that Rectory library. Don Quixote 

 never lingered more lovingly over the fascinating 

 pages of Feliciana de Sylva than George Kingsley 



