At my return from our late excursion the first object that attracted my attention, upon approaching the barracks of the hospital department, was a string of negroes singing out in the sailors’ cry,——Yeoh-yeoh, yeoh-yeoh, and hauling at a long rope, towing something heavy round the corner of the building. Curiosity arrested me, for a moment; when, alas! I discovered at the end of the cord, the body of my poor horse! who, in the last night of his master’s absence, had fallen a victim to the fever, which spares neither man, nor the patient steed. He was now being dragged away to his grave, and the pause I made brought me only the sad gratification of casting a look upon his remains.

This is a serious loss to me, less on account of the exorbitant price of horses in these colonies, than from the extreme difficulty, or perhaps the impossibility of finding another, at any rate whatever. I had long waded through the mud before an opportunity offered of providing myself, and by mere chance, had, at length, been well suited; but I had scarcely brought my horse into condition fit for riding, before he was snatched from me, by what is often termed——the seasoning!

It happens, however, that I shall not long feel this privation, as letters have, at length, arrived from head-quarters, containing orders for my removal from the coast of Guiana to St. Domingo. This is the arrangement to which I have been looking from my earliest arrival in these colonies; but on account of its being so long delayed, and my having received instructions for continuing here, I had begun to expect that the hospital staff, already at St. Domingo, had been found sufficient for the duties of that station, without recalling the detachment of the medical department serving upon this coast: but, by the letters which have now reached me, I learn that the direful malady of these regions has been sadly fatal among the hospital officers at St. Domingo; that, although the number of troops is considerably decreased, the medical attendants have suffered so extensively, that strong reinforcements are necessary, to enable the hospital department to do justice to the yet remaining multitudes of sick.

In so far as this change of station will afford me an opportunity of seeing more of the Western World, I shall hail it with satisfaction; but my heart sorrows at the thought of treading in the steps of my lost brethren and colleagues,—men, with whom I have lived in habits of intimacy, and close friendship—partaking of the same perils, eating from the same dish, and reposing in the same cabin; and notwithstanding I neither regard the fever as contagious, nor feel the slightest personal apprehension of disease, still I cannot but experience a mournful depression, on being called to execute the urgent duties which I may have to encounter, upon the very spot where my comrades have fallen. Nor will it be without regret that I shall quit the hospitals of my own creating, which, after nearly twelve months of anxious exertion, I have brought into a state well fitted for affording the necessary accommodations to the sick.