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 guns of the fort, and it would have been madness to attempt to enter with that contraband cargo in open daylight. Instead Captain Semmes crept into the mouth of the Great Ogeechee by night and ascended the river to the big swamp, and there lay concealed while he communicated with Lamar in Savannah.

"Lamar thereupon announced that he was going to give a grand ball in honor of the officers and garrison of the fort, and insisted that the soldiers, as well as their superiors, should partake of the good cheer. When the gayety was at its height the Wanderer stole into the river and passed the guns of the fort unchallenged in the darkness and made her way to Lamar's plantations, some distance up the river. The human cargo was soon disembarked and placed under the charge of the old rice-field negroes, who were nearly as savage as the new importations."

According, however, to a letter written by Lamar to N. C. Trowbridge, of New Orleans, on December 18th, the smugglers were in trouble enough in spite of successful tricks, for United States District Attorney Ganahl had moved in the matter at once, and Lamar wrote:

I returned from Augusta this morning. I distributed the negroes as best I could; but I tell you things are in a hell of a fix; no certainty about anything. The Government has employed H. R. Jackson to assist in the prosecution, and are determined to press matters to the utmost extremity. The yacht has been seized. The examination commenced to-day and will continue thirty days, at the rate they are going on. They have all the pilots and men who took the yacht to Brunswick here to testify. She will be lost certain and sure, if not the negrees. Dr, Hazlehurst testified that he attended the negroes and swore they were Africans, and of recent