which is the hotbed of the slave-market.
The Niger, a great river, navigable for
hundreds of miles, with branching and tributary
navigable streams, forms an easy highway
into Africa. That Europe should use
this highway as a means of carrying the spirit
of healthy commerce, and all its attendant
blessings, into an injured sister continent,
became, after the Niger was discovered, the
first natural and obvious idea. Trial was
made at once by the Liverpool merchants,
with a horrible result. Alluding to the first
muster of his men on board the Quorra, Mr.
Laird says, "the crew were all picked men,
from twenty-five to thirty-five years of age;
and little did I think, as I beheld their
athletic and powerful frames, that in a few
mouths the only survivors of us would be
myself and three others." The expedition of
1841 alarmed all minds with the same fearful
warning. Who will go out to travel on that
stream of death?

Fortunately safe, in our Phantom Ship, we
now step over instantly to Sierra Leone, and
call at Freetown for some Kroomen. There
are two tribes there, Kroomen and Fishmen,
not very fond of one another. The Kroomen
cut wood and serve as relief to the white
crews on European vessels. They are a fine
native race, well formed and muscular, with
more than the average of African intelligence.
They have great faith in Europeans, according
to their own expression, "White man go to de
debil, Krooboy follow." When the expedition
of 1841 panted to leave the Niger, and
the Kroo woodcutters could not keep pace,
in their toil, with the impatience of the
sufferers, knee-deep in water they cheerfully
worked over-hours, and kindly bore the
natural expressions of impatience. Afterwards,
at Fernando Po, instead of dispersing
themselves idly ashore, their first thought was to
go and kneel down by the beds of the sick
officers, and speak with a gentleness of
sympathy that, as the listeners remarked, was in
peculiar contrast with their large athletic
forms. "Krooboy love white man too much"
—and white man honours Krooboy. Lander
seems to be the only traveller who did not
thoroughly appreciate this worthy race.

The Kroomen, being properly acclimatised,
are taken by most vessels on coast service, to
save the whites, and are required for Niger
navigation which, to them, is by no means
deadly. If ever the Niger be made—as it
must and will eventually—a great highway
for European commerce, we must be indebted
to the Kroomen for it. So we take Kroomen
on our Phantom Ship and steer directly for
Cape Nun.

Surely the clouds are off to a committee
meeting, they scud all eastward and take up
their stations in a semicircle. Take notice
and prepare. There is a foam track flying to
us on the water. Cannons, whirlwinds,
thunder and spoondrift, that's a tornado.
Wait a bit says a sailor, "it's only old Nature
sneezing." It's over now with a heavy rain
and the air wonderfully freshened.

Here is Cape Nun; a bar of sand to be
crossed only at high water, stretches across
the Nun branch of the Niger. Our countrymen
of 1841 called it "the Gate of the Cemetery."
The Niger spreads out over the last
one hundred and sixty miles of its course into
many branches, which discharge the waters of
that river by twenty-two mouths—the Benin,
Nun, Bonny, and others—into the sea. These
branches inter-communicate, and all the
country over which they flow is called the
Delta. The Nun branch is the only one
explored, and a creek so narrow that a vessel
is sometimes unable to turn round in it, is, in
one part, the only passage known to be safe.
It is called Louis Creek.

The dwellers beside the river are in this
part of its course a miserable race; sickly in
appearance, vexed with skin diseases, and
especially with craw-craw, a Brobdignagian
kind of itch, afflicting all the body. Near
enough to the coast to be demoralised by
intercourse with Europeans, the natives of
the Delta seem to be inhospitable as their
swamps. As we pass through the mangroves
there rises into the cool morning air a thick
oppressive vapour, it looks like the smoke of
wood fires; it is oppressive even to the smell.
That is the Niger poison. Pass on and exult
in health; escaping from the mangroves and
the meanders of the Delta, float over the
magnificent spectacle of a great river in the
tropics; think yourself sound; but you have
swallowed poison—most probably, too, in a
fatal dose. It gives you sixteen days for
respite; but on the sixteenth day the poison
works. You think that you have got into a
sickly portion of the river, that is not the
case; but in passing through the Delta, you
accepted a heavy bill of mortality, and it has
now come due. In plain words, there is an
interval of sixteen days between the reception
of the poison, and its fatal outbreak. In the
case of the Liverpool expedition, after the
sixteen days were complete, the sweep of
fever and death were terrible. Men fell one
after the other as though suddenly brought
up under an unseen battery. In 1841, there
was the same reprieve—the same fortnight
of false confidence followed by a check little
less severe. In the main river itself there is
nothing peculiarly deadly.

Before leaving the Delta we will pay a
visit to King Boy of Brass-town. Among the
potentates of the river King Boy has most
to do with Europeans. Living near the sea,
he trades with the interior for palm oil, but
chiefly for slaves, has his own barracoons,
and retails his wares at about three hundred
per cent, probably on what he paid for them.
Of him the Europeans buy. King Boy rules,
or ruled—he may now be dead—at Brasstown,
down a branch or creek of his own,
though by-the-by there is another chief,
King Jacket, on the other side. King Boy is