fleet, on its return from the Baltic, convoyed by captain Pearson, with the frigate Serapis, of forty-four guns, and the Countess of Scarborough, of twenty. Pearson had no sooner perceived Jones, than he bore down to engage him, while the merchantmen endeavored to gain the coast. The American flotilla formed to receive him. The two enemies joined battle at about seven in the evening, with great resolution, and the conflict was supported on both sides with equal valor. The Serapis had the advantage of metal and manœuvre; to obviate which, Jones took the resolution to fight her closer. He advanced till the two frigates were engaged yard to yard, and their sides so near that the muzzles of their guns came in contact. In this position they continued to fight from eight in the evening till ten, with an audacity bordering on frenzy. But the artillery of the Americans was no longer capable of producing much effect. The Richard having received several heavy shot between wind and water, could now make no use whatever of her lower batteries, and two or three of her upper guns had burst, to the destruction of those who served them. Jones, at length, had only three left that could be worked, and he employed them against the masts of the hostile frigate. Seeing the little impression made by chain-shot, he resorted to another mode of attack. He threw a vast quantity of grenades and fire-works on board the British frigate. But his own now admitted the water on all sides, and threatened every moment to go to the bottom. Some of his officers having perceived it, asked him if he would surrender?"No," he answered them in a tremendous tone, and continued to push the grenades. The Serapis The Serapis was already on fire in several places; the English could, with difficulty, extinguish the flames. Finally, they caught a cartridge, which, in an instant, fired all the others. with a horrible explosion. All who stood near the helm were killed, and all the cannon of that part were dismounted. Meanwhile, Pearson was not disheartened: he ordered his people to board. Paul Jones prepared himself to repulse them. The English in jumping on board him found the Americans ready to receive them on the point of their pikes; they made the best of their way back to their own vessel. But during this interval, the fire had communicated itself from the Serapis to the Bonhomme Richard, and both were a prey to the flames. No peril could shake these desperate men. The night was dark, the combatants could no longer see each other but by the blaze of the conflagration, and through dense volumes of smoke, while the sea was illuminated afar. At this moment, the American frigate Alliance came up. Amidst the confusion she discharged her broadside into the Richard, and killed a part of her remaining defenders. As soon as she discovered her mistake, she fell with augmented New Series, No. 7. 25 ry upon the Serapis. Then the valiant Englishman, seeing a eat part of his crew either killed or disabled, his artillery disounted, his vessel dismasted, and quite enveloped in flames, rrendered. All joined to extinguish the fire, and at length it as accomplished. The efforts made to stop the numerous leaks the Richard proved less fortunate; she sunk the next morning. ut of three hundred and seventy-five men that were aboard that essel, three hundred were killed or wounded. The English had ut forty-nine killed, and their wounded amounted to no more an sixty-eight. History, perhaps, offers no example of an action more fierce, obstinate and sanguinary. During this time the Pals had attacked the Countess of Scarborough and had captured er, not however without a stubborn resistance. After a victory hard-earned, so deplorable, Jones wandered with his shattered essels for some days, at the mercy of the winds, in the north sea. le finally made his way good, on the sixth of October, into the aters of the Texel.' pp. 112-114. The account of the battle of Cowpens between Morgan and Carleton is also highly animated and graphic. Tarleton, after having passed with equal celerity and good rtune the rivers Ennoree and Tiger, presented himself upon the anks of the Pacolet. Morgan retreated thence forthwith, and arleton set himself to pursue him. He pressed him hard. Moran felt how full of danger was become the passage of Broad ver, in the presence of so enterprising an enemy as now hung pon his rear. He therefore thought it better to make a stand. le formed his troops in two divisions; the first composed of ilitia, under the conduct of colonel Pickens, occupied the front f a wood, in view of the enemy; the second, commanded by olonel Howard, was concealed in the wood itself, and consisted f his marksmen and old continental troops. Colonel Washing›n, with his cavalry, was posted behind the second division, as reserve. Tarleton soon came up and formed in two lines; is infantry in the centre of each, and his horse on the flanks. very thing seemed to promise him victory. He was superior in valry, and his troops, both officers and soldiers, manifested an xtreme ardor. The English attacked the first American line; ter a single discharge with little harm to the enemy, it fled in nfusion. They then fell upon the second; but here they found more obstinate resistance. The action was engaged and suported with equal advantage. Tarleton, to decide it in his favor, ished forward a battalion of his second line, and at the same me directed a charge of cavalry upon the right flank of the mericans. He was afraid to attack their left, supported by lonel Washington, who had already vigorously repulsed an assault of the had the expe were thrown that the day alry was in fi whose troop petuosity, tha ing this inte troops, and le had also, by brought them presence and profited of th general char that the Engl confusion. eagerness. hortations, pra fiture was tota more than eig of the seventh 251. I The hurric terror hardly The event But though the in, and it hardl sels that were selves in safety the open sea, a was the conditi passion. In th became yet mo assault of the British light horse. The manœuvre of Tarleton had the expected effect; the American regulars gave way and were thrown into disorder. The English rushed on, persuaded that the day was now their own. Already Tarleton with his cavalry was in full pursuit of the routed, when colonel Washington, whose troop was still entire, fell upon the enemy with such impetuosity, that in a few moments he had restored the battle. During this interval, colonel Howard had rallied his continental troops, and led them back upon the English. Colonel Pickens had also, by prodigious efforts, re-assembled the militia and again brought them to the fire. Morgan was visible everywhere; his presence and words re-animated the spirits of his soldiers. He profited of that moment of enthusiasm to precipitate them in one general charge upon the enemy. The shock was so tremendous that the English at first paused, then recoiled, and soon fled in confusion. The Americans pursued them with inexpressible eagerness. It was in vain that the British officers employed exhortations, prayers and threats to stay the fugitives; the discomfiture was total. Tarleton lost, in dead, wounded and prisoners, more than eight hundred men, two pieces of cannon, the colors of the seventh regiment, all his carriages and baggage.' pp. 249 251. The hurricane of Barbadoes in 1780, presents a scene of terror hardly inferior to the plague of Athens. The events we have been relating were succeeded, in the West Indies, by a sort of general truce between the two parties. But though the fury of men was suspended for a while, that of the elements broke out in a manner much more tremendous. It was now the month of October, and the inhabitants of the islands were in the enjoyment of that unexpected tranquillity which resulted from the cessation of arms, when their shores and the seas that washed them, were assailed by so dreadful a tempest, that scarcely would there be found a similar example in the whole series of maritime records, however replete with shocking disasters and pitiable shipwrecks. If this fearful scourge fell with more or less. violence upon all the islands of the West Indies, it no where raged with more destructive energy than in the flourishing island of Barbadoes. It was on the morning of the tenth that the tornado set in, and it hardly began to abate forty-eight hours after. The vessels that were moored in the port, where they considered themselves in safety, were wrenched from their anchors, launched into the open sea, and abandoned to the mercy of the tempest. Nor was the condition of the inhabitants on shore less worthy of compassion. In the following night, the vehemence of the hurricane became yet more extreme: houses were demolished, trees uproot ed, men and animals tossed hither and thither, or overwhelmed by the ruins. The capital of the island was well nigh razed to a level with the ground. The mansion of the governor, the walls of which were three feet in thickness, was shaken to its foundations, and every moment threatened to crumble to ruins. Those within had hastened to barricade the doors and windows to resist the whirlwinds; all their efforts were of no avail. The doors were rent from their hinges, the bars and fastenings forced; and chasms started in the very walls. The governor with his family sought refuge in the subterraneous vaults: but they were soon driven from that shelter by the torrents of water that poured like a new deluge from the sky. They issued then into the open country, and with extreme difficulty and continual perils repaired under the covert of a mound, upon which the flag-staff was erected; but that mass being itself rocked by the excessive fury of the wind, the apprehension of being buried under the stones that were detached from it compelled them again to remove, and to retire from all habitation. Happily for them they held together; for, without the mutual aid they lent each other, they must all inevitably have perished. After a long and toilsome march in the midst of ruins, they succeeded in gaining a battery, where they stretched themselves face downward on the ground, behind the carriages of the heaviest cannon, still a wretched and doubtful asylum, since those very carriages were continually put in motion by the impetuosity of the vortical gusts. The other houses of the city being less solid, had been prostrated before that of the gov ernor, and their unhappy inhabitants wandered as chance directed during that merciless night, without shelter and without succor. Many perished under the ruins of their dwellings; others were the victims of the sudden inundation; several were suffocated in the mire. The thickness of the darkness, the lurid fire of the lightning, the continual peal of the thunder, the horrible whistling of the winds and rain, the doleful cries of the dying, the despondent moans of those who were unable to succor them, the shrieks and wailings of women and children, all seemed to announce the destruction of the world. But the return of day presented to the view of the survivors a spectacle which the imagination scarcely dares to depict. This island, lately so rich, so flourishing, so covered with enchanting landscapes, appeared all of a sudden transformed into one of those polar regions where an eternal winter reigns. Not an edifice left standing; wrecks and ruins every where; every tree subverted; not an animal alive; the earth strown with their remains, intermingled with those of human beings; the very surface of the soil appeared no longer the same. Not merely the crops that were in prospect, and those already gathered, had been devoured by the hurricane: the gar dens, the field thing that cou dens, the fields, those sources of the delight and opulence of the colonists, had ceased to exist. In their place were found deep sand, or sterile clay; the enclosures had disappeared; the ditches were filled up, the roads cut with deep ravines. The dead amounted to some thousands: thus much is known, though the precise number is not ascertained. In effect, besides those whose fallen houses became their tombs, how many were swept away by the waves of the swoln sea and by the torrents, resembling rivers, which gushed from the hills? Much of what escaped the fury of the tempest fell a prey to the frantic violence of men. As soon as the gates of the prisons were burst, the criminals sallied forth, and joining the negroes, always prepared for nefarious deeds, they seemed to brave the wrath of heaven, and put every thing to sack and plunder. And perhaps the whites would have been all massacred, and the whole island consigned to perdition, if general Vaughan, who happened to be there at the time, had not watched over the public safety at the head of a body of regular troops. His cares were successful in saving a considerable quantity of provision, but for which resource the inhabitants would only have escaped the ravages of the hurricane, to be victims of the no less horrible scourge of famine. Nor should it be passed over in silence by a sincere friend of truth and honorable deeds, that the Spanish prisoners of war, at this time considerably numerous in Barbadoes, under the conduct of Don Pedro San Jago, did every thing that could be expected of brave and generous soldiers. Far from profiting of this calamitous conjuncture to abuse their liberty, they voluntarily encountered perils of every kind to succor the unfortunate islanders, who warmly acknowledged their services. The other islands, French as well as English, were not much less devastated than Barbadoes. At Jamaica, a violent earthquake added its horrors to the rage of the tornado; the sea rose and overflowed its bounds with such impetuosity, that the inundation extended far into the interior of the island. In consequence of the direction of the wind, the effects of the sea-flood were the most destructive in the districts of Hanover and Westmoreland. While the inhabitants of Savanna-la-Mer, a considerable village of Westmoreland, stood observing with dismay the extraordinary swell of the sea, the accumulated surge broke over them, and in an instant, men, animals, habitations, every thing was carried with it into the abyss. Not a vestige remained of that unhappy town. More than three hundred persons were thus swallowed up by the waves. The most fertile fields were left overspread with a deep stratum of sterile sand. The most opulent families were reduced in a moment to the extreme of indigence. If the fate of those who found themselves on shore was deplorable beyond all expression, the condition of |