They were all well received on board their ship, comfortably provided for, and carried to their respective countries. All things now being duly arranged between the several governments, the ships got under way to return to England. " Thus ended one of the most sanguinary bombardments that England had ever been engaged in. the Dey, villain as he was5> fought like a hero, cheering his men at the different batteries, and worked hard himself, he being a brave man, encouraging his men to repel the infidels. When I went with the dispatches on the first day of the attack, I saw his own flag hoisted on the tight horse batterv. This 1G particular flag is carried with him, always to be hoisted when he takes his station.
It is of red, white, and yellow stripes. But the strongest proof of his being in the batteries is, that when I met him on the second day of the battle, I saw that all the folds of his turban and dress were full of dust and smoke of powder, as well as his face and beard. The number of killed and wounded on board the British ships was. eight hundred and fifty-two; in the Dutch squadron, killed and wounded sixty-five. The loss of the Algerines is not even known to themselves, because they do not take care of their people as we do. They have no surgeons to dress the wounded men directly. They never perform the operation of amputating limbs to save the life of a person, but on the contrary, put all their wounded men into a large stable till the day after the battle, by which many who might have been saved by the immediate amputation of an arm or leg, were left to perish.
Of their killed and wounded I had several reports; some said the number was about eight thousand, some six thousand, some five thousand, and some four thousand. I am sure, however, that their loss must have been very great, because they said that if the Dey had not ordered the gates of the city to be opened during the battle, to let the rest of the inhabitants run away, (though a great part of them had left the town ten days previous to the fleet's arrival,) numbers more would have been killed; nevertheless many were killed by the explosion of our shells and by the rockets in the city, and while they were going out of town, whose bodies were afterwards found.
The Mahometans in burying their dead are followed by a great number of men and women crying and howling, as well as a great number of men, who are continually rushing forward to carry the coffin, confidently certain that each person by supporting the weight of the coffins for a few minutes, will assume a portion of the dead men's sins, and that the great number of people who carry the coflin will diminish the sins of the decased, so that ho may go to heaven pure, or without any grievous offence on his shoulders. All these customs, while we were at Algiers, wore prohibited by the Dey, andhegave orders to bury the dead privately, without making any noise or abusing any ceremony.
This proves that the Dey wished not to let the number of the dead be known to us. But I learned by many reports that there were three large houses full of dead bodies, and that the people were employed to bury them every night during the week of our stay there. " They buried them in a ground separated from the other cemetery, because according to Mahometan doctrine, they consider every person killed in battle, a martyr, and as the attack happened to take place on the fourth of their holidays of Eamadan, previous to which they had passed thirty days of fasting, they were fully persuaded that the whole of those who fell were the purest of martyrs.
At first they thought that our rockets were a kind of signal rockets; but, when some of them had burst among the troops and killed a great number, then they changed their opinion, especially when several of the rockets fell on board their navy and some of the houses. They wished to put the fire out by water, but found that the more water they had, the more ardent the flame became. The materials of the composition, they said, stuck to the wood and penetrated like oil, the effect of which filled them with horror. " The quantities of powder and shot spent in this tremendous action are really so surprising that I thought the following detail worthy of insertion.