NAVAL REMINISCENCES.

EL-ARISH.

[FROM THE UNITED SERVICE JOURNAL, NO. 9.]

Among the several attacks made in Egypt, under Sir Sidney Smith, the taking of El-Arish added another to the many laurels of England. It is well known that we co-operated with the Turks to expel Napoleon from Egypt, that he took possession of El-Arish having driven out the Turks, and that the English were preparing to retake the town in conjunction with its former possessors. The Vizier, in pursuance of this design, sent to Sir Sidney Smith, requesting the assistance of some English officers, to direct the operations against the town. Though many, no doubt, (I judge from myself,) were anxious to be chosen for this expedition, in order to signalize themselves, yet Col. Douglas, Col. Bromley, and Capt. Winter, from the ship "Le Tigre," (accompanied by some few sailors) were the only officers chosen by Sir Sidney. Col. Douglas wished some one to accompany him in whom he might place confidence, and, to We left my great delight and pride, I learned that he had fixed on me. Gaza, where we then were, on the 22d of Dec. 1799, and after two days and two nights of great fatigue, occasioned by the motion of the camels, lying in the open air at night without covering, together with the effects of the climate, we arrived at El-Arish, as much to our joy, as to the gratification of the Turks. As we marched through the desert, that seemingly boundless expanse of sand, the moon rose in silent majesty-affording a fine field for reflection on the Providence of whose aid we might so soon stand in need. We commenced by erecting a battery against the town, so as to command the NW. and NE. towers, and flank the north entrenchment, by which means we rendered the musketry on that side of no avail. We then opened our ports, and sent the British thunder out in dense volumes of smoke; nor did we fire in vain; for after a most heavy and tremendous cannonading of seven successive days and nights, the French colours disappeared, and the town surrendered to the superior skill of the British, owing that it was the battery and heavy firing directed by us that made them resolve to capitulate.

During the firing I had nearly lost my life, for I was standing by and directing one of the guns, when a Turk came up to me, boasting of his superior skill at that instrument of destruction, and desired that I would let him manage the one I was then attending to. Believing him expert, I complied; but no sooner had he reached the spot, than a shot directed with fatal precision from the fort, rendered him a mangled corpse. Fancy me then, covered with gore and dripping with my ally's blood; fancy me lifting my heart to all-seeing Providence in the contemplation of my near approach to death, and wanderful escape; but my horror and my gratitude can be felt only by those who have seen the dying and the dead,

the sad remains of battle's bloody work.-But to the main story. The French flag was then struck and lowered from the towers of El-Arish, and we all hastened to the gates to supply its place with the banner of Eng land. A capitulation was signed, nearly to this effect,-That the French were to leave the castle within an hour, to lay down their arms on the glacis, leave all their baggage behind, become prisoners of war, and trust their sick and wounded to the humanity of the Turks. This capitulation, however, was violated by the Vizier, and numbers of the French fell beneath the sabres of the irritated Turks, to whom a sequin for every head had been promised by their commander. One poor woman, the wife of a French officer, ran up and down, frantic with despair, calling on her husband, and inquiring of those she met, in broken accents, of her husband's fate. Alas! I could have told her that she was a desolate widow, for by her description, I saw him perish under the dagger of a Turk.

An adventure nearly similar to this happened to me, and for the second time I was providentially rescued from destruction The Turks hastened in the utmost confusion to the fort. Col. Douglas was there, and I was obliged to follow on foot, my horse having run away, being frightened by the fire. In the croud I lost my red mantle, and was therefore compelled to appear in blue; this accident nearly cost me my life. Some Turks perceiving me in a blue dress and without a turban, (for that I had also lost.) seized on me, believing I was a Frenchman, nor could my repeated cries of "English, English," undeceive or deter them from their purpose. I was dragged to a ditch full of heads and covered with blood: here I was laid hold of by a Turk, who had just dispatched one victim; he seized me by the hair, and was on the point of ending my existence, when one of the Vizier's own men, to whom I was well known, called out that [ was English This occasioned a dispute, some wishing to save, others to destroy me; the contest at length rose so high, that they both proceeded to lay hold of me, one party, of my body, the other, my legs. In this manner they fought for a considerable time, till at length a stout fellow rescued and carried me off, more dead than alive to a place of safety. I then endeavoured to crawl to the camp, thinking that all danger was over for that day at least, but I was mistaken; again I was taken for a Frenchman, but I happily escaped, in the most deplorable condition; my mouth was full of blood and sand, and I was tormented by a parching thirst, my sight failed me, and my clothes were torn to rags. Yet was all this suffering the means of my most providential escape; for when I was carried off by the Turks a desperate Frenchman fired the fort, and perished amidst numbers of his countrymen, and also of his enemies, upon whom he had revenged himself by involving them in the conflagration and ruin, Had I not been hurried away by the Turks, I must have shared their fate.

T. G. S.

SINGULAR INSTANCE OF PERSEVERANCE.-The celebrated Bernard Palissy, to whom France was indebted, in the sixteenth century, for the introduction of the manufacture of enamelled pottery, had his attention first attracted to the art, his improvements in which form to this time the glory of his name among his countrymen, by having one day seen by chance a beautiful enamelled cup, which had been brought from Italy. He was then struggling to support his family by his attempts in the art of painting, in which he was self-taught and it immediately occurred to him that, if he could discover the secret of making these cups, his toils and difficulties would be at an end. From that moment his whole thoughts were directed to this object. He spent the whole of his money, however, without meeting with any success, and he was now poorer then ever. Yet it was in vain that his wife and his friends besought him to relinquish what they deemed his chimerical and ruinous project. He borrowed more money, with which he repeated his experiments; and, when he had no more fuel wherewith to feed his furnaces, he cut down his chairs and tables for that purpose. Still his success was inconsiderable. He was now actually obliged to give a person, who had assisted him, part of his clothes by way of remuneration, having nothing else left; and, with his wife and children starving before his eyes, and by their appearance silently reproaching him as the cause of their sufferings, he was at heart miserable enough. But he neither despaired, nor suffered his friends to know what he felt; and at last, after sixteen years of persevering exertion, his efforts were crowned with complete success, and his fortune was made.-The Pursuit of Knowledge.

PATENT CARTRIDGE.-C. F. Orson's patent for an improved cartridge for sporting purposes, consists of a cylinder for containing the charge of shot in the fowling piece, made of card or strong paper, with longitudinal slits through which the shot is prevented from passing; the piece is discharged by a covering of thin paper pasted on the exterior, and by a circular wadding of card placed in each end of the cylinder; the intention of this patent is to prevent the shot from being too much scattered, or thrown in clusters before they reach their destination.-Atlas.

WORDSWORTH.-To the author of the Lyrical Ballads, nature is a kind of home; and he may be said to take a personal interest in the universe. There is no image so insignificant, that it has not in some mood or other found its way into his heart; no sound that does not awaken the memory of other years. The daisy looks up to him with sparkling eye as to an old acquaintance: the cuckoo haunts him with sounds of early youth not to be expressed; a linnet's nest startles him with boyish delight: an old withered thorn is weighed down with a heap of recollections; a grey cloak, seen on a wild moor, torn by the wind, or drenched in the rain, becomes an object of imagination to him: even the lichens on the rock have a life and being in his thoughts. He has described all these objects in a way, and with and an intensity of feeling that no one else had done before him, and has given a new view or aspect of nature. He is in this sense the most original poet now living, and the one whose writings could the least be spared for they have no substitute elsewhere. The vulgar do not read them, the learned, who see all things through books, do not understand them, the great despise, the fashionable may ridicule them: but the author has created for himself an interest in the heart of the retired and lonely student of nature, which can never die. Spirit of the Age.

ANIMAL CHARCOAL.-It has been found that animal charcoal will, if properly applied, preserve the must of grapes. With one pint of the juice of the grapes, a hundred grains of animal charcoal, and more, if the former contain much fermentable matter, are to be mixed. When it has lost its colour, and is clear, the charcoal is separated from it, and it is preserved in bottles and casks closely stopped. It does not ferment even in open vessels, because the charcoal has absorbed the principle of fermentation; this, however, has not become inactive, from its combination with the first, for if the charcoal be felt in the must, this begins to ferment, but not throughout like ordinary must, in which the principle of fermentation is diffused, but only at the bottom of the vessel, where the animal charcoal containing it is precipitated.—Atlas.

GENERAL WOLFE.-An anecdote is told of General Wolfe that he was out with a party of friends in a boat, the day before the battle of Quebec. It was a beautiful summer's evening, and the conversation turned to Gray's Elegy in a country churchyard, which was just then published. Wolfe repeated the lines: "For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey," &c. with enthusiasm, and said, "I would rather be the author of those lines than beat the French to-morrow! He did beat the French, and was himself killed the next day. Perhaps it was better to be capable of uttering a sentiment like this, than to gain a battle, or write a poem.-Indicator.

DERBYSHIRE'S PATENT MEDICINE, TO ALLEVIATE SEA-SICKNESS.-The malady of nausea to which so many persons are subject at sea, produces such wretched and painful sensations for the time of its duration, that any remedy which could conveniently be applied, must be highly acceptable; we are not able to speak from our own experience of the success of the present invention, neither does it appear to us to promise so certain a remedy, or cure, as the mechanical contrivance described by Mr. Pratt, but the means being simple and within every one's reach, it is desirable that it should be extensively known, and, we hope, it will be found beneficial. To prevent the possibility of mistake, we give a description of the materials employed. In its nature it is an embrocation for sea-sickness, that is to Bay, to prevent in some cases sea-sickness, in others to cure persons who are affected by it, and in others, for mitigating its severity. The manner in which it is to be performed and applied, is as follows:-take of crude opium two ounces, avoidupois, two drachms of extract of heubane, ten grains of powdered mace, and two ounces of hard mottled soap, boil them in sixty ounces of soft water, letting it boil for half an hour stirring it well all the time; when cold, add one quarter of spirits of wine at sixty degrees above proof, and three drachms of spirits of amonia. Rub a dessert spoonful of this embrocation well in, over the lower end of the breast-bone and under the left ribs, the latest time you can conveniently do so before embarkation, and again on board as you can have an opportunity. If, notwithstanding this, you become sick, apply the embrocation as before, and continue the application while the sickness continues.-Atlas.

NEWSPAPERS." I need not dwell on the moral advantages of Newspapers. However humble the talents of those who conduct them, they are the medium through which much useful, agreeable, and improving information is given to the public, and they have attractions which belong to nothing else in the shape of print. The most interesting new book, the volumes of Scott and Cooper, are thrown aside when the journal makes its appearance. There is no exaggeration in saying that every grown up person in the empire who can read, would have a newspaper if he or she could obtain it. They are in truth the literature of the working classes, wherever they are within their reach-the retail shops of knowledge, where it is cut into morsels for the use of those who could never buy it in the bulk. There is scarcely a subject of any novelty, connected with philosophy, science, art, literature, trade, religion, or morals, of which they do not give us some account, and however deficient this may be for the purposes of the rich and the learned, it is highly useful to those who have neither money to buy, nor leisure to read, extensive treatises. Even the mental stimulus which a newspaper supplies has an excellent moral effect in withdrawing men from intemperance. It needs the excitement of News to tempt a person to read whose animal spirits are exhausted with ten or twelve hours of hard manual labour, for there are few things in the shape of a volume which he will take the trouble to open. Knowing, as I do, how eager workmen of the humblest classes are to have the use of a journal, have often thought when I have seen one of them reeling home drunk in an evening, that the government, in denying him the only species of reading suited to his habits, by taxing newspapers so heavily, had been mainly instrumental in driving him to the alehouse. The population of the British Isles at present is very nearly double the population of the United States, the one being above 23,000,000 and the other about 12,000,000. Deducting the blacks, the American population will be about 10,000,000. In the British Isles, there are at present 334 newspapers, of which 19 or 20 are daily, viz. 16 in London, and 3 or 4 in Ireland. In the United States in 1816, there were 364 newspapers; in 1823, there were 598; and in last spring, Mr. Cooper estimated the number at 600,

Notions of the Americans," vol. 2nd, p. 133.)-Of these, according to the statement of an American editor, there are fifty published daily. New-York, in the month of March last, had 12 daily papers; Philadelphia 8 or 9; Baltimore 5; Boston 3 or 4, &c. There is not a town in Great Britain, but London, that does or can support a daily paper.-In the United States every considerable town has one or more. Rochester, a town, with 6,000 inhabitants; Troy, with nearly the same number, (both in the State of New York,) have each their Daily Paper. while neither Manchester nor Glasgow has one. Think of the capital of Scotland wanting a paper of this discription, while an American town of the size of Dalkeith has one! Think, too, of Leith, with an population of 20,000 persons, trying in vain some years ago to establish a weekly paper! Philadelphia and Liverpool have nearly the same amount of population, but the English town has probably six times as much trade as the American. Now, Liverpool has eight WEEKLY papers, which put forth 8 publications in all per week. Philadelphia has eight daily papers, and eight or ten others, which put forth about 70 publications per week! Scotland, with 2,1000,000 of inhabitants, has 38 papers, not one of which is published more than thrice a week. Pensylvania, with 1,200,000 inhabitants, had 110 papers in 1823, of which 14 or 15 were published daily! These facts speak for themselves. They fully warrant the conclusion, that in the most thickly settled parts of the United States, which alone afford proper materials for comparison the number of Newspapers in circulation amongst any given number of inhabitants is eight or ten times as great as in Britain. What can make so great a difference, but the comparative cheapness of their papers, and the abundance of their advertisements."-Scotsman. IMAGINATION.-It is a great mistake to suppose that a philosophical spirit is in direct contradistinction to an imaginative one. On the contrary, the highest order of thinkers, and discoverers, such as Bacon, Newton, and Leibnitz, are mainly indebted to the imaginative faculty. A case in point:-The latter, when occupied in his philosophical reasonings on his “law of continuity," his singular sagacity enabled him to predict a circumstance which was afterwards realized,-he imagined the necessary existence of a Polypus. The supposition of Columbus in regard to the existence of a western continent, was also imaginative.—Indicator.

KNEADING OF BREAD BY MACHINERY.-A company has heen established in Paris, in the Fauxbourg St. Antoine, to supply the metropolis with pure bread.— Among other improvements adopted by this society is that of kneading the bough by means of steam machinery. The substitutes for the working of the bread by manual labour, besides the greater cleanliness of the process, has the further advantage of allowing years to be dispensed with, the additional power of the machine being sufficient to give the bread its proper degree of lightness without any foreign aids. The capital of the company is divided into 4000 Shares of 1000 francs each.-Manual of Science and Literature.

QUARRELS OF FRIENDS.-I think, I have observed universally that the quarrels of friends in the latter part of life, are never truly reconciled. "Malé sarta gratia nequicquam coit, et rescinditur ;" a wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over, as to leave no scar. The case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancour, towards the latter part of life.-Shenstone's Essays.

WATERPROOF GLUE.-Immerse common glue in cold water, until it becomes perfectly soft, but yet containing its original form, after which it is to be dissolved in common raw linseed oil, assisted by a gentle heat until it becomes entirely taken up by the latter, when it may be applied to substances for adhesion to each other in the common way glue is ordinarily applied-it dries almost immediately, and water will exert no influence on it. It is unnecessary to say for how many valuable purposes in the arts this valuable application may be used. For cabinet makers it is important, as mahogany veneers, when glued with this substance, will never fall off by exposure to a moist atmosphere. In ship building, it will probably answer a valuable purpose, as it has infinitely more tenacity than common glue, and becomes impervious to water.