Whenever the Caribs in any of the lesser Antilles projected an expedition against the Indians, they provided themselves with clubs and poisoned arrows, and set off in their canoes. On their way, they touched at most of the other small islands; and with their conch shells, of which they always kept a supply, they summoned their brother Caribs to join the expedition. As the fleet of canoes approached St. Domingo (the principal theatre of their depredations) they glided silently along the coast, and secreted themselves in some sheltered bay, till the darkness of the night enabled them to emerge from their hiding places. Then, with the most savage yells and war-whoops, accompanied by the blowing of shells, they pounced upon the nearest village, beating down with their clubs such of the Indians as had not taken refuge in flight. In these encounters, however, the Caribs were not always victorious. If the Indians were less robust and warlike than their invaders, they were also far more numerous; and it sometimes happened that the Caribs were driven back to their canoes with much slaughter. In all hand-to-hand conflicts the conch shells would easily get detached, or, becoming an incumbrance, would be thrown aside; and the Indians, finding them on the field of battle, may be supposed to have piled them up as so many trophies. As the Caribs were incited to these incursions by the prospect of plunder among a race of people their superiors in the arts of civilisation, but chiefly from their inveterate hatred to the Indians, so the moment they had accomplished their object, they lost no time in retreating from a country where a longer sojourn would only have afforded their enemies an opportunity of risings _en masse_, and exterminating them by the superiority of their numbers. These facts are sufficient to account for the heaps of shells found by Sir R. Schomburgk, and for the other traces of the Caribs which he appears to have discovered in St. Domingo, without resorting to the supposition that the Caribs had actually "inhabited" that island, or warranting the conclusion that the two races were identical. HENRY H. BREEN. St. Lucia, Sept. 1851. MITIGATION OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT TO A FORGER. The well-known cases of Dr. D. the divine and Mr. F. the banker, who were executed for forgery, notwithstanding the powerful intercessions that were made in their behalf, induced me to suppose that any mitigation of punishment under similar circumstances used to be a very rare occurrence; and, if so, that a curious instance of successful application for mercy may interest some readers of "NOTES AND QUERIES."