be perfectly safe, and beyond which place the people were represented as being less rapacious, so that little fear was to be entertained from them.  As the afternoon approached, they inquired in vain for the promised guide, and when they found that the chief, or rather his brother, felt no disposition whatever to redeem his pledge, they made immediate preparations to leave the town, to the manifest disappointment of the latter, who made a very dolorous lament, and did all in his power, except employing actual force, to induce them to change their resolution.

They now ordered Pascoe and their people to commence loading the canoe, but the poor fellows were all in tears and trembled with fear; one of them in particular, a native of Bonny, said, that he did not care for himself, as his own life was of little consequence, all he feared was, that his masters would be murdered, and as he had been with them ever since they had left the sea, it would be as bad as dying himself, to see them killed.

In pursuance of their plans, on the same afternoon, they bade adieu to the inhabitants of Kacunda, and every thing having been conveyed to the canoe, they embarked and pushed off the shore, in the sight of a multitude of people.  They worked their way with incredible difficulty through the morass, before they were able to get into the body of the stream, and being now fairly off they prepared themselves for the worst.  “Now,” said Richard Lander, “my boys,” as their canoe glided down with the stream, “let us all stick together; I hope that we have none amongst us, who will flinch, come what may.”

They had proceeded some distance down the river, when seeing a convenient place for landing, the men being languid and weary with hunger and exhaustion, they halted on the right bank of the river, which they imagined was most suitable for their purpose.  The angry and scowling appearance of the firmament forewarned them of a shower, or something worse, which induced them hastily to erect an awning of mats under a palm tree’s shade.  The spot for a hundred yards was cleared of grass, underwood, and vegetation of all kinds:  and very shortly afterwards, as three of their men were straggling about in the bush, searching for firewood, a village suddenly opened before them; this did not excite their astonishment, and they entered one of the huts which was nearest them, to procure a little fire.  However, it happened only to contain women, but these were terrified beyond measure at the sudden and abrupt entrance of strange-looking men, whose language they did not know, and whose business they could not understand, and they all ran out in a fright into the woods, to warn their male relatives of them, who were labouring at their usual occupations of husbandry.  Mean time, their men had very composedly taken some burning embers from the fire, and returned to their masters, with the brief allusion to the circumstance of having discovered a village.  This at the time