We were driven to the 40th degree of north latitude, and saw the volcanic hills of the Azores. I remember when at Guadaloupe, finding in a house when on a foraging party a curious history of the discovery of these isles, by Gonsalvo Velio, in 1449, in which there was a quaint and Gothic story of this adventurous voyager, perceiving the figure of a warrior on horseback on the summit of a rock overlooking the sea. "His left hand was on his horse's mane, and his right hand pointed to the west."
Startled on beholding such an apparition in a desolate island, Gonsalvo landed, and the figure was found to have turned into stone, and certain cabalistic characters were graven on the face of the rock before it.
We ran pretty close to St. Michael, the isle of oranges and most eastern of the group; and then, with all the fleet that were in sight, bore up for the island of Barbadoes, our point of rendezvous.
Ere this, I had already reaped a portion of the fruit of my steadiness, and attention to duty since my enlistment, and also of the good education bestowed upon me, by my kind mother, from whom I was now so far, far away.
"Once in the ranks—always in the ranks is the maxim of the British army," says a writer in 1857, who knows little about the matter; "a man who accepts the shilling from the recruiting sergeant, and fulfils an engagement made over his ale in a pot-house, bids adieu to all hope of raising in the military profession; he must give up all ambition, and seek what pleasure he can find in transient indulgences."
Even in the old times of which I write, we did not find ourselves thus degraded in the Scots Fusiliers; at least I—Oliver Ellis—found it otherwise, for old Captain Glendonwyn, after discovering my few qualifications, made me useful in keeping the books of his company; and the reader must remember that in those days of practical soldiering, very few non-commissioned officers could read or write. I could do both, and had also a smattering of French and Latin. Thus, I was considered a species of military prodigy; and when a fever, which broke out in the fleet on its reaching warmer latitudes, swept off several of our sergeants, I was promoted to one of the vacant halberts, and my heart expanded with hope, joy, and ambition, when Lord Kildonan, who, of course, remembered how I had saved him from Cranky's pistol, told me earnestly to continue to conduct myself with care, "and I might yet wear a pair of epaulettes as my father had done before me."
The deaths were so frequent, as to cast a permanent gloom over all on board; and I still recall the emotions of awe and repugnance, with which I saw each poor corse corded up in blankets and, with a cold shot at its heels, consigned to a grave in the brine, through which the sharks followed us with voracious obstinacy.
On the 3rd of March we saw land in earnest, and with three hearty cheers that rang from ship to ship, we hailed the fertile shores of Barbadoes.
As the fleet drew near, the undulating line of the island rose gradually from the deep resplendent blue of the Carribean sea, presenting an aspect of that surpassing verdure and fertility to be found in the tropics alone. The tall sugar-canes were swaying in the soft breeze that came from the ocean, and the groves of the plaintains, guavas, pineapples, orange, lime, and citron trees, all in their varied tints of green foliage and golden fruit, bounding flat green lawns or shading little villages, above which the sugar-mills were tossing their fanlike arms, made Barbadoes a charming scene to eyes that had gazed so long upon the changeless waste of sea and sky.
We ran into Carlisle Bay, and on Admiral Jervis's ship firing a gun, the whole fleet came to anchor in three lines; the courses were handed and the yards squared, while crowds of black-skinned and woolly-headed negroes came running out of the plantations to the shore to gaze at us; and numbers came off from the little bights and creeks in their piraguas or canoes, offering for sale pine-apples at a penny each, guavas, bananas, and monkeys to suck, (i.e., cocoanuts filled with rum). The Adder, with the head-quarters of the Fusileers, was the leading frigate of the leeward line, so we were less than a mile from the shore.