The year following a brilliant dash was made with the object of damaging Ostend, and, like many others of these harassing and essentially useless debarkations, it did much damage; but, failing to be able to re-embark, the assailants were compelled to surrender. The force was but 1200 strong all told, with 6 guns, and was made up of detachments of the Guards, 11th, 23rd, and 49th Foot, and a few men of the 17th Light Dragoons under General Coote. Similarly useless and disastrous was the abortive passage of the Dardanelles in 1807, which was followed by a feeble descent on Egypt, in pursuance of the idea, this time, of harassing the Turk. But the army was too weak to effect any real annoyance, and the 35th, 78th, and 31st sacrificed useless lives at Rosetta and El Hamet, the detachment of the 78th being surrounded and losing 260 men out of 275. Several of the men became leaders in the Turkish army, and one Scottish drummer boy was until recently still living, the last survivor of General Fraser’s small command. But there were two incidents in these times that are worth recording, those of the first attempts against South America at Buenos Ayres and Monte Video, and the successive operations that led to the conversion of the Cape of Good Hope into an English colony. Beginning with the latter, it will be remembered that it was first taken possession of in 1795, with the consent of the Prince of Orange, but contrary to the desire, apparently, of the colonists, who resisted the attempt to occupy a position at Simon’s Bay held by the 78th and some marines; but when reinforced by the 84th, 95th, and 98th Regiments, an advance was made on Wynberg, where, after a slight skirmish, the inhabitants surrendered. In the same year a number of other small Dutch possessions, including Colombo, fell into English hands. The Cape was resigned in 1801 by the treaty of Amiens; but the alliance between the French and Dutch led to the assembling of an expedition for its recapture, in which a Highland brigade, the 71st, 72nd, and 93rd Regiments, a brigade composed of the 24th, 38th, 59th, and 83rd Regiments, with the 20th Light Dragoons, and one field battery with two howitzers, took part. The resistance was most feeble, and the enemy, though armed with nineteen cannon, barely awaited the attack of even the Highland brigade. A number of the natives there were later formed into a regiment by Colonel Graham, and these were the forerunners of the Cape Mounted Rifles, a force which has done good service in Kaffir wars since. In connection with this conquest, so important in the expansion of our Eastern Empire, may also be recorded the capture, in 1810, of Mauritius from France, and Java from the Dutch, in which the 12th, 19th, 22nd, 65th, 84th, and 89th, under Abercrombie, and the 14th, 59th, 69th, 78th, and 89th, under Auchmuty, took an active part. Their capture freed those seas from the Dutch and French privateers, and secured our trade route with Calcutta.