I Find An Entry In My
Journal, When Off The Isle Of Wight.
We had had most tremendous weather,
successive gales of foul wind, from north and north-east.
Our schooner
was a beautiful vessel, a fine sailer with a flat bottom, drawing little
water, made purposely for Barbary ports. She had her bows completely
under water, and pitched her way for twenty-five succeeding days,
through huge rising waves of sea and foam. During the whole of this
time, I never got up, and lived on bread and water with a little
biscuit. Captain Taylor, who was a capital seaman, and took the most
accurate observations, lost all patience, and, though a good methodist,
would now and then rush on deck, and swear at the perverse gale and
wrathful sea. We took on board a fine barb for Mr. Elton, which died
after a few days at sea, in these tempests. I had a young vulture that
died a day before the horse, or we should have fed him on the carcase.
[Illustration]
An aoudad which we conveyed on account of Mr. Willshire to London, for
the Zoological Society, outlived these violent gales, and was safely and
comfortably lodged in the Regent's Park. After my return from Africa, I
paid my brave and hardy fellow-passenger a visit, and find the air of
smoky London agrees with him as well as the cloudless region of the
Morocco Desert.
APPENDIX.
The following account of the bombardment of Mogador by the French,
written at the period by an English Resident may be of interest at the
present time.
Mogador was bombarded on the 13th of August, 1844. Hostilities began at
9 o'clock A.M., by the Moors firing twenty-one guns before the French
had taken up their position, but the fire was not returned until 2 P.M.
The 'Gemappes,' 100; 'Suffren,' 99; 'Triton,' 80; ships of the line.
'Belle Poule,' 60, frigate; 'Asmodee' and 'Pluton,' steamers, and some
brigs, constituted the bombarding squadron. The batteries were silenced,
and the Moorish authorities with many of the inhabitants fled, leaving
the city unprotected against the wild tribes, who this evening and the
next morning, sacked and fired the city. On the 16th, nine hundred
French were landed on the isle of Mogador. After a rude encounter with
the garrison, they took possession of it and its forts. Their loss was,
after twenty-eight hours' bombarding, trifling, some twenty killed and
as many more wounded; the Moors lost some five hundred on the isle
killed, besides the casualties in the city.
The British Consul and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Robertson, with
others, were obliged to remain in the town during the bombardment on
account of their liabilities to the Emperor. The escape of these people
from destruction was most miraculous.
The bombarding squadron reached on the 10th, the English frigate,
'Warspite,' on the 13th, and the wind blowing strong from N.E., and
preventing the commencement of hostilities, afforded opportunity to
save, if possible, the British Consul's family and other detained
Europeans; but, notwithstanding the strenuous remonstrances of the
captain of the 'Warspite', nothing whatever could prevail upon the
Moorish Deputy-Governor in command, Sidi Abdallah Deleero, to allow the
British and other Europeans to take their departure.
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