historical. 
23 
Tlie General Court-martial re-assembled again on the following 
day, when three more received similar sentences, but it was deemed 
sufficient to carry out one only, and that was done in the presence 
ot the whole garrison assembled in Jamestown. Some of the 
remainder were committed to prison, and, the spirit of insubordina- 
tion having been crushed out, they were finally permitted to return 
to their duty.* 
A successful result of General Beatson’s measures for checkin^ 
the amount of drunkenness will be gathered from the following : — 
“Ihe houses for retailing spirits were abolished on the 15th of 
May, 1809. I lie garrison at that time consisted of about one 
thousand hundred and fifty men, of whom one hundred and 
thirty-two were sick in hospital. Four months after that abolition 
the patients were reduced to forty-eiglit.”t 
Governor Beatson’s energy and ardour as displayed in his war 
against the goats was, however, less successful ; for, notwithstanding 
us efforts to effect their total extermination, his measures were im- 
perfectly carried out, so that in a few years they increased again in 
numbers, and threatened to destroy not only the indigenous plants, 
hut all other vegetation as well. 
Of all the good that General Beatson proposed and did for the 
Island, perhaps none has caused a more lasting tribute to his 
memory than the measures he took for importing forest trees, 
planting the Island, the preservation of the indigenous flora, and 
his extensive and indefatigable experiments in agriculture, the 
results of which he has left on record, in a periodical work called 
The St. Helena Register,” as well as his “ Tracts on St. Helena.” 
General Beatson retired from the Government at the expiration of 
five years, but his successor, Colonel Mark Wilks, was a man of 
larger mind than to fall into the common course of undoing what a 
predecessor has done, and accordingly concurred in most of Governor 
Beatson’s plans for the improvement of the place and its people. 
He arrived at the Island on the 22nd June, 1813, and it was during 
his reign that the most remarkable event occurred which ever 
hefell St. Helena, 
Governor Beatson, in thanking the loyal portion of the garrison, specially mentions the 
Artillery as being free from this spirit of insubordination. 
t Beatson’s Tracts on St. Helena. 
