The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-09 00:00:00

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PRICE 4D. STAMPED, SD•

time to come in repairing and reconstructing the
batteries and other portions of the fortifications on
the sea-coast in that neighbourhood, the Govern-
ment having decided on making some important
additions to the defences on that part of the coast,
and mounting on the more exposed batteries a num-
ber of the long•range Armstrong guns of the largest
construction. During the winter the Royal Engi-
neers will be employed chiefly in preparing the
earthworks of the fortifications, in readiness for
mounting the guns early in the ensuing spring.
Yesterday morning, at 9 o'clock, several hundred
non-commissioned officers and men belonging to
the Indian depots at Chatham barracks, consisting
chiefly of the troops of the 43d (Light Infantry),
53d, and 77th Regiments, were marched dawn to
the Gun-wharf at Chatham for the purpose of being
instructed in embarking and disembarking from the
vessels in harbour, under the direction of the staff
officers of the garrison. Since the last occasion of
the troops being exercised in this part of their mili-
tary duties several improvemen!s have been made
in the method adopted, the result of which is that
the embarkations aro effected more expeditiously
and with the same amount of military discipline as
before. Each man was provided with his musket
and other aceoutrements,and on reaching the Gun-
wharf detachments proceeded into the men-of-war
launches in waiting to receive them. As soon us
each of the launches was filled with from 50 to GO
men and officers the boats proceeded out to the
Tyne, whicli has been fitted up for this service, the
men embarking on board that vessel in the most
orderly manner. The boats then returned for other
parties of troops until the whole were embarked,
the time occupied being about half an hour. After
a short interval the disembarkations commenced,
and were conducted in as orderly and as expedt-.
tious a manner as the embarkation.

Yesterday orders were received at Chatham for
the detachment of Royal Engineers selected to prct
ceed to China to meet the detacli'nent of Royal
Artillery, also under orders for that service, and
both will proceed to Portsmouth together for em-
barkation on board the Simoom.

Capt. H. G. Savage has been appointed to the
command of the 33d company of Royal Engineers
now at head-quarters ; and Lieut. G. E. Grover,
R.E., has been directed to proceed from Chatham to
Shorncliffe to join the Royal Engineers. at that
statim.
Orders have been received at Portsmouth from
the Admiralty, directing the Artillery branch of
the service to be formed into a separate division of
Royal Marines. This blanch of the service is not
to be separated from -the mother corps, as has been
stated. That could not be, as the Artillery officers
will, as heretofore, go back to the Light Infantry
branch of the service on promotion, the alteration
being simply another divisional head-quarters of
the Royal Marine Corps, now called the Royal
Marine Artillery Division, having a colonel-com-
mandant of its own, a second commandant, four
lieut.-colonels, a paymaster, barrackmaster, two ad-
jutants, quartermaster and second quartermaster,
surg., assist.-surg., and staff. Col. Dwyer, being
the oldest officer serving at present in the Royal
Marine Corps, who has been in the Artillery branch
of the service, will, in accordance m ith the rules of
this service, be its future commandant, Col. Fraser
its second commandant (as at present), Lieut.-Col.
Tate, Major Wemyss, Brevet Lieut.-Col. Alexander,
Brevet Lieut.-Col. Schomberg, its four lieut.-cols.
(the three latter to be acting until they are pro-
moted in the Corps of Marines), Major Lawrence
to be paymaster, Capt. Meade barrackmaster,
Lieuts. Testing and Durnford adjutants, Lieut.
Foster and Sergeant. Major Healing quartermasters.
The surgeon, assistant-surgeon, and others are not
yet named.
The Northamptonshire Militia will complete its
21 days' training on the 14th inst. This regiment
served during the Crimean war in Ireland and at
Gibraltar, and was re-embodied in the autumn of
1857 till May, 1858, when it was disembodied, being
then 800 strong. The muster has been most credit-
able, nearly 900 men being now present at head-
quarters. Their conduct has been most orderly,
and the regiment is in a high state of discipline. It
is, however, still armed with the old musket, nor has
a single round of practice ball ammunition been
issued to the regiment since the year 1853. Much
surprise is expressed that the Government do not
embody this fine regiment, which is of more than
double the strength of many of those now embodied.

OUTBREAK AT HARPER'S FERRY.

(From a Corrcspcheent of the Doily 11 caes.J
NEW YORK, Om 26.
At the date of my last letter the news of the negro
insurrection at Harper's Ferry had just reached us,
and I gave you what was then my impression, that
the accounts we had received were grossly exagge-
rated, and that a good many of the details were pro-
bably manufactured to influence the approaching
elections. We now know all about it, and though it
appears to have been a bona fide insurrection, I was
not far wrong in the estimate of its importance. An
elderly man named John Brown, or as he is more
commonly called " Old Brown of Ossowatomie," a
native of New England, and a settler and leading
combatant on the free soil side in Kansas during the
troubles there, appears "to have contrived and car-
ried it out, as far as it went. Brown is a New Eng-
land puritan of the old school, and went to the
west with a family of six sons, to better his for-
tune by farming. He was in Kansas when it was
invaded by the border ruffians, and though he has
always been an abolitionist he never displayed
any fanaticism in the cause until his house had
been burned, two or three of his sons killed under
circumstances of peculiar atrocity, and numbers
of his neighbours murdered and driven from
their homes before his eyes. The loss of his sons
seems to have deranged his mind, and he took the
field with as many men as he could muster, and
at once became the terror of the pro-slavery men.
He defeated an immensely si.perior force of them at
Ossowatomie, and did summary execution upon large
number of single individuals, and all in a spirit of
the most exalted religious enthusiasm. He finally
got it into his head that he was commissioned by
God to wage war upon slaveholders and liberate
negroes, an seems to have inspired his followers
with a portion of his own frenzy. No man per-
formed half so many daring exploits in the course
of the war. More than once he seized upon Mis-
sourians in their own homes, in the dead of the
night, and hanged them on the nearest tree, for
having participated in outrages on the free-state
men in Kansas; and he at last became the bugbear
and terror of all the border ruffians. Whenever
" Old Brown" was reported to be in the neighbour-
hood they instantly disappeared. When the war
was over a return to his old mode of life was of
course impossible. The loss of his sons had mad-
dened him, and he devoted himself entirely to
carrying off slaves to Canada. That he was coun-
tenanced and encouraged in this by many leading
abolitionists there seems to be no reason to doubt ;
but that any of them went any further has yet to be
proved. For the last year or more the public has
not heard much of him, but during this interval he
seems ,to have been busiloy engaged in organising an
insurrection of the slaves. With this view he went
to Virginia, hired a farm in the neighbourhood of
Harper's Ferry and having quietly, and as it ap-
pears without exciting any observation, collected a
considerable quantity of arms and ammunition, and
been joined by fifteen of his most devoted followers,
including his two surviving sons, on the evening of
the 13th inst. he seized upon the United States'
armoury in the village, arrested and imprisoned the
employes and many of the principal inhabitants in
the neighbourhood, blocked up the railroad, cut the
telegraph wires, and called on the negroes to join
him. The negroes did not join him, however, and
in a skirmish with some of the railroad men he re-
mained master of the field, but was finally driven
back into the armoury, which he loopholed and
barricaded. He defended the armoury successfully
until the arrival of militia from all parts of tie coun-
try, and of marines from Washington. He was
then summoned to surrender, refused to do so, and
the door being burst open, he and his surviving fol-
lowers—only two out of seventeen—were captured,
Brown himself being badly wounded. One or two
of his adherents, who did not succeed in entering
the armoury with him, made their escape, and are
still at large.
The affair has excited profound sensation, and, let
me add, profound consternation in the South. The
secrecy with which the plot was brough to maturity,
the large quantity of arms and ammunition which
Brown had collected, the facility with which he
surprised the village and seized the armoury, the
desperate tenacity with which he held it, the reso
lution displayed by all his followers from first to
last, and more than all, Brown's dauntless bearing
since his capture, the lofty tone of moral superiority
which he assumes over his captors, have made a
profound impression on the Southern people. They
have long been in the habit of accusing the aboli-
tionists of tampering with the negroes, and inst igat-
ing them to flight or revolt, but it was always sup-
posed to be in an underhand sneaking way. The
popular notion of an abolitionist made him above all
things a coward. But here is at least a small taste of