24 BATTERIES. [1845. 







in conjunction with her boat force, was in a condition to 

 capture the two Cavallos Islands, and from the northern, 

 supported by the ship, obtain possession of two batteries 

 on the right, which commanded the lower forts opposite, 

 as well as the harbour. We counted about twenty-four 

 guns on the summit of the northern Cavallos, which could 

 be brought to bear on the right-hand battery, and as they 

 occupied about the same level as the batteries alluded to, 

 it would have been an easy matter, by charging them 

 with English powder, and serving them with British 

 seamen, to have become masters of their defences. One 

 such lesson, rapidly taught, the guns spikecl, or with- 

 drawn for embarkation, "with a disposition to renew 

 friendly intercourse ", would have put an end to any 

 further symptoms of hostility. All this it may be said, 

 reads very smoothly on paper, but we considered their 

 batteries themselves little better than the substance on 

 which these observations are recorded. The guns I had 

 every reason to believe to be of sound workmanship and 

 of bronze, excellent weapons worked by competent men, 

 but with their miserable handling and from our knowledge 

 of their execrably bad powder, incapable of throwing an 

 effective shot at half range, and that a plunging one ; we 

 were therefore fully justified in under-rating them. I can 

 only compare these weapons of defence, to a few field 

 pieces pointed through a drying yard, and worked by old 

 women. It will hardly be credited in the year 1845 

 that any place of defence could have been so constituted ; 

 the only cover, or breastwork, to this ordnance was com- 

 posed of sheets of calico three widths in depth, and forty 

 yards in length, each stretched on pikes, erected vertically, 



