shot at them in particular. In front of the barracks and other necessary places, were parades and walks, the rest of the ground was soft mud. I have seen the enemy's shells fall upon it and sink so low that their report could not be heard when they burst, and I could only feel a tremulous motion of the earth at the time. At other times, when they burst near the surface of the ground, they would throw the mud fifty feet in the air.
The British had erected five batteries with six heavy guns in each and a bomb-battery with three long mortars in it on the opposite side of the water, which separated the island from the main on the west, and which was but a short distance across; they had also a battery of six guns a little higher up the river, at a place called the Hospital point. This is a short description of the place which I was destined, with a few others, to defend against whatever force, land or marine, the enemy might see fit to bring against it.
The first attempt the British made against the place after I entered it was by the Augusta, a sixty-four gun ship. While manœuring one dark night she got on the chevaux-de-frise which had been sunk in the channel of the river. As soon as she was discovered in the morning we plied her so well with hot shot, that she was soon in flames. Boats were sent from the shipping below to her assistance, but our shot proving too hot for them, they were obliged to leave her to her fate; in an hour or two she blew up with an explosion which seemed to shake the earth to its centre, leaving a volume of smoke like a thunder cloud, which, as the air was calm, remained an hour or two. A twenty gun ship which had come to the assistance of the Augusta in her distress, shared her fate soon after.
Our batteries were nothing more than old spars and timber laid up in parallel lines and filled between with mud and dirt; the British batteries in the course of the day would nearly level our works; and we were, like the beaver, obliged to repair our dams in the night. During the whole night, at intervals of a quarter or half an hour, the enemy would let off all their pieces, and although we had sentinels to watch them and at every flash of their guns to cry, "a shot," upon hearing which every one endeavoured to take care of himself, yet they would
