We departed from Versailles fifteen hundred souls. We set out on the

eighteenth of June. We made a long procession, in which was contained every

dear relationship, or tie of love, that existed in human society. Fathers

and husbands, with guardian care, gathered their dear relatives around

them; wives and mothers looked for support to the manly form beside them,

and then with tender anxiety bent their eyes on the infant troop around.

They were sad, but not hopeless. Each thought that someone would be saved;

each, with that pertinacious optimism, which to the last characterized our

human nature, trusted that their beloved family would be the one

preserved.

We passed through France, and found it empty of inhabitants. Some one or

two natives survived in the larger towns, which they roamed through like

ghosts; we received therefore small encrease to our numbers, and such

decrease through death, that at last it became easier to count the scanty

list of survivors. As we never deserted any of the sick, until their death

permitted us to commit their remains to the shelter of a grave, our journey

was long, while every day a frightful gap was made in our troop--they

died by tens, by fifties, by hundreds. No mercy was shewn by death; we

ceased to expect it, and every day welcomed the sun with the feeling that

we might never see it rise again.

The nervous terrors and fearful visions which had scared us during the

spring, continued to visit our coward troop during this sad journey. Every

evening brought its fresh creation of spectres; a ghost was depicted by

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The Last Man