We had not been long at Portsmouth, when the head-quarters of the regiment were ordered to embark on board of the _Surat Castle_ East Indiaman, a fifteen-hundred-ton ship, then lying off Spithead, and the remainder of the corps on board of other ships at the same place. Our destination was the Cape of Good Hope. The _Surat Castle_ in which I was doomed to sail, was most dreadfully crowded; men literally slept upon one another, and in the orlop-deck the standing beds were three tiers high, besides those slinging. Added to this, the seeds of a pestilential disease had already been sown. An immense number of Lascars, who had been picked up in every sink of poverty, and most of whom had been living in England in a state of the most abject want and wretchedness, had been shipped on board this vessel. Many of these poor creatures had been deprived of their toes and fingers by the inclemency of winter, and others had accumulated diseases from filth, many of them having subsisted for a considerable time upon what they picked up in the streets. The pestilential smell between decks was beyond the power of description; and it was truly appalling to see these poor wretches, with tremendous and frightful sores, and covered with vermin from head to foot, many of them unable to assist themselves, left to die unaided, unfriended, and without one who could perform the last sad office. The moment the breath was out of their bodies, they were, like dogs, thrown overboard as food for sharks. To alleviate their sufferings by personal aid was impossible, for we had scarcely men enough to work the ship. These circumstances were, I suppose, reported to the proper authority; but, whether this was the case or not, in three or four days we weighed anchor, with about sixty other ships for all parts of the world. The splendid sight but little accorded with the aching hearts, lacerated bodies, and wounded minds of the poor creatures below. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when the signal was fired to weigh. Immediately every sail was waving in the wind, and in a quarter of an hour after we stood out from land, each proud bark dipping her majestic head in the silvery deep, and manoeuvring her sails in seeming competition, to catch the favouring breeze.