or was a most unmitigated rascal. We
follow him in company with Mr. Oldfield, to
his capital, on board a boat heavily laden.
His Majesty with a cunning, coarse face,
and red eyes, is attired in a Scotchman's
dress, a present from England, the deficiency
in which he has supplied with a huge
pair of Turkish trowsers, fastened outside,
the skirt of his kilt being tucked into
them. He shouts to his subjects as he enters
Brass-town, through a long speaking trumpet,
his own praise. His mother, an old wretched
looking negress, sits on the bank. They give
her six glasses of rum, which make her to
caper. We land. Here's a capital! Mud,
dirt, rats, and huts—the river floods it. His
Majesty takes us to the abode of a favorite
wife, who has prepared dinner—goat's-flesh
boiled with the hair on. Here is the sleeping
apartment of his palace, ankle-deep in mud,
with a raised part moderately sloppy, on
which we may spread a mat—there is no
other furniture. We are awakened by alarming
uproar; there must be men breaking
through the roof. We shout aloud for help,
and all is quiet. We are still: our hearts
beat—there they are at work again. Bats
jovial in the roof. The thatch is full of them;
the floor is riddled with rat-holes. We will
not stay long with King Boy of Brass-town.

The number of kings in Western Africa is
very large; the power of each accords with
his physical strength and his possessions. On
each side of the Cameroons is a king, and the
two kings differ in one being painted red, the
other white. One of these is a fine old man
who has, after a fashion common with Coast
Africans, fitted up for his honour and glory,
a house of two stories, with chairs, tables, and
European odds and ends; that is the manifesto
of his wealth; without it he was a boy—
having it, he is a man, a "big man" enough
to be a king. He has procured of some ship's
carpenter a painted signboard, with his name
KING AQUA, painted on it in large Roman
letters. This he has fixed over his house-door;
unluckily, however, upside down; and the tout
ensemble can contemplate with dignified humility
from the door of the small hut down by
the river-side, in which he lives. His palace
is a fiction of the best bright poker class.
There is also among these monarchs a due
consideration of the necessity of preserving
what we in Europe call the balance of power.
A red coat given to "that rascal over the
way," excites indignation in a slighted prince.
Lieutenant Allen meeting a chief who thus
believed himself insulted, was regarded
wrathfully. "Plenty bad bob for you"—(bob
in the Cameroons, means a palaver or scolding)
—"plenty too much bad bob;" this was
bold menace.

Leaving the coast and King Boy, our
Phantom Ship has passed the Delta, and after
one hundred and sixty miles of passage from
Cape Nun, is at length really in the Niger.
Very soon we shall reach Eboe.

What glorious magnificence of wood and
water! The splendid African oak, the cotton
tree, with its huge stem, the fibres of which
are totally unfit for the Manchester market,
and the light feathery plumes of the palm
trees nodding over them against the deep
blue sky! Here and there a gay
hippopotamus is flirting with her friend, or
dropping with a loud splash from the banks
into the current. Higher up you may see
these good-humoured beasts in parties of
a dozen. Alligators, too! The natives cut
up alligators, and consider them good meat.
They have a quaint way of catching them.
One negro darts a spear into his tail, pinning
him to the ground, and holds him in that
manner, twisting and leaping up and down
the pivot he has made to keep it steady, and
to hold the alligator safe. While his companion
is thus wriggling and grimacing in a
dance over the victim's tail, another with a
long knife capers about his head, and darts in
to inflict a wound as often as he can do so
without risk. So at length the alligator being
slain, is dragged up high and dry, cut into
portions, and sold—as we might say—in
pennyworths.

The huts in this lower part of the river
are all square, higher up they are round, and
then from that point throughout the interior
—so far as we know—the huts of the natives
are in all cases round. Fishing-nets
suspended over the stream are part of the furniture
of every village.

Now we are at Eboe, the first native town
of any note since we have left the Delta.
Here lives King Obi. King Obi is a
tautological expression. Obi means king in that
part of the world, and is the title of the chief.
Just in the same way the next large town as
we ascend the river Iddah—is governed by
an Attah (Father) who was called King Attah
by the early travellers.

King Obi does a great deal of business in
palm oil and slaves, King Boy kisses the ground
before him, as a shrewd country traveller will
bow before a customer with whom he does a
thriving business. Obi sells to Boy, and others
like him; these traffic with the merchants on
the coast. King Obi was one of those who
signed a treaty for suppression of the slave-
trade, on the faith of other commerce being
substituted for it. We may state here our
conviction, once for all, that as far up as
Rabbah, or the country inhabited by the
Felatahs, the native chiefs are not only ready,
but anxious for commerce with the Europeans.
Supposing the grand obstacle of the Delta
vanquished, and granting that the first traders
must inevitably lose money from loss of time,
through unpreparedness, and inexperience, on
the part of the natives—if we may boldly
imagine these difficulties overcome, there is
nothing whatever in the disposition or habits
of the people to impede a friendly intercourse
profitable to us and to themselves. Slavery
is not in their eyes iniquitous; it is so to few