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It is pleasantly situated on the top of a sand-hill. At this place you have the finest view the River Demerara affords: three tiers of hills rise in slow gradation, one above the other, before you, and present a grand and magnificent scene, especially to him who has been accustomed to a level country.

The music had ceased in the city. There was a great silence. The good priest of Amara, strolling by chance at the dinner-hour of the following day towards the camp of the hospitable strangers, was surprised and saddened to find only the sand-hill strewn with debris. The tents, the camels, the mules, the horses all were gone. No servants greeted him. No cook was busy.

The ramparts being composed of sand, not more than three feet in thickness, are faced with plank barely cannon-proof; whilst a sand-hill rising within pistol-shot of the ditch, completely commands them. Within, again, the fort is as much wanting in accommodation as it is in strength.

To do him justice he remitted all odd coin to his wife in Bruce county, and he wrote saying he was perfectly happy in his new life. He awoke one morning and found himself in the "Best" Hotel, Ashcroft, British Columbia, Dominion of Canada, and the first thing he saw was the sand-hill. He thought Ashcroft was the most desolate looking spot he had ever seen.

Over every slew, on all sides, thousands of ducks of many kinds, and several sorts of geese hovered, settled, or burst up in eruptions of birds, their back-feathers shining like bronze as they turned so as to reflect the sunlight to my eyes; while so far up that they looked like specks, away above the wind it seemed, so quietly did they circle and sail, floated huge flocks of cranes the sand-hill cranes in their slaty-gray, and the whooping cranes, white as snow with black heads and feet, each bird with a ten-foot spread of wing, piping their wild cries which fell down to me as if from another world.

Acting as a guide for Uncle Benjamin, I took him to where I had left my garment. At this time the children were scattered around in the woods, waiting for what the trouble would bring; They all were gathered up and taken to the sand-hill house, examined, and it was found, as I have stated, that their backs were all scarred.

In wet weather, when his vestibule is shallow, the sand-hill crane may burglarize him, or even get a snap judgment on him at the front door. The bill of the great curlew cannot be sent in so effectively, not being so rightly drawn; but that bird, more common in the season than anywhere else away from the coast, finds plenty of other food. He is not here in the winter.

The next morning they set out on a tour of exploration. They were not long before they came upon many relics of the wreck: planks, spars, and remains of the cargo. They lay nearly two hundred yards from the shore, and bore no signs of the rough usage that had marked the wreckage among the rocks. “Hurrah! there are some tubs,” Joyce shouted, as they reached the top of a low sand-hill.

On the 10th, four eighteen-pounders with two howitzers were placed in battery upon the top of the sand-hill; on the 11th, the fort surrendered; and on the 12th, the garrison, consisting of four hundred men of the second American regiment, marched out with all the honours of war, and laid down their arms upon the glacis.

The Koreysh, as our guide explained to us, were posted upon the hill behind the tombs, while Mohammed had divided his small force into two parts, with one of which he himself advanced in the plain against the enemy, and the reserve was entrusted to Aly ibn Aby Taleb, with orders to take his post upon the sand-hill on the western side.