SETTLEMENTS ON THE DEMERARY, 293 



for attending to it, free of expence; and by having negroes 

 sent from the distant parts of the colonies, thus giving the 

 medical men, who resided inland, an opportunity of extend- 

 ing it. 



The medical staff attached to the Batavian troops was very 

 numerous, but consisted principally of inexperienced young 

 men, and boys of sixteen or seventeen, as mates, who, from 

 all appearance, had been taken out of apothecaries shops in 

 Holland, for the purpose of continuing that parsimony they 

 had so ably commenced with. To these unskilled youths, and 

 to their lack of knowledge, was the health of two thousand 

 men confided. I can figure to myself the outcry which 

 would have been raised against a British ministry, were any 

 of their undertakings conducted on a similar basis. 



- My aim and intention is to relate facts without exaggera- 

 tion, I will therefore take the liberty of returning again to the 

 2d of December, when the troops were drawn up to receive the 

 governor. They were landed in the afternoon of the 1st, and 

 on the 2d, when they were paraded with ostentation, they had 

 not had one meal, or eaten a morsel since leaving the transports, 

 which nearly completed a space of twenty-four hours. The 

 first day's duty and exposure to the sun, without that suste- 

 nance which nature required for her support, with the other 

 disadvantages the troops laboured under, may be deemed the 



