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176 situation, her prospects, up to the evening of Sunday, the 14th October—the night before the expected sailing of the vessel which was to bring these gratifying and welcome tidings to her native country. From herself there is no further intelligence. The Maclean arrived at the close of the year, bringing, with these seeming evidences of life and hope, intelligence of the dreadful reality—Death, sudden death. The public papers of the 1st of January, 1839, contained the following announcement:

"Died, on Monday, the 15th of October last, at Cape Coast Castle, Africa, suddenly, Letitia Elizabeth, wife of George Maclean, Esq., Governor of Cape Coast."

The intelligence created but one sentiment of grief and pity in all to whom it came; but to the few who received, at the same moment, an apparent testimonial, under her own hand, of health and spirits, cheerful views and honourable endeavours, the shock was profound, the anguish bitter. There was a pang beyond even that; and it followed quick, upon the announcement that, according to the verdict of a coroner's jury, summoned to inquire into the cause of death, the lamented lady had died by poison, incautiously administered by her own hand, as a remedy for a spasmodic attack with which she had been seized on the morning of the fifteenth.

The depositions taken at this inquest were immediately obtained, by the brother of the deceased, from the secretary to the Western African Company. They are as follow:—

"At an inquisition held at Cape Coast Castle, the fifteenth day of October, eighteen hundred and thirty-eight, before me, James Swanzey, Esq., one of her Majesty's justices of the peace, and