Chapter VII: The King’s Return Visit

Matutinè, I ascended the Ake church steeple, pulled out a board to enable me to catch a glimpse of the Ogboni lodge of Eruwan, and succeeded only in seeing that it had three courts, which confirmed the account of my informant. This day, Tuesday, the to us memorable 5th of November, was to become more memorable yet. His Majesty the Alake had overwhelmed Commander Bedingfield with the proffer of a return visit—an event rare in Abeokuta; moreover, his Majesty had the grace to be punctual to his time, 10 A.M.

The Egbas, it must be remembered, are a race of bushmen and farmers, clothiers and blacksmiths, compelled by their enemies to collect and centralize. They were naturally unwilling to elect a king till necessity drove, and then they did it with all manner of limitations. The Alake, I have said, possesses neither the state nor the power of the pettiest Indian Rajah. The only king ever known in Yoruba was he of Oyo (Eyeo), the capital, who was described as living in regal state.

Negrotic Africa—not unlike her sisters Europe and Asia—has three distinctly marked forms of government. The first and strongest is a military despotism, like that of Ashanti, Dahome, Kongo, the Balonda people, the Kazembe and Urungu; Turkey, Persia, and the Great Mogul of the olden time, are their equivalents. In these the ruler owns no law but custom, which means right, and which cannot be transgressed even by the most powerful.[159] The second is a kind of feudal monarchy, modified by the personal character of the king; oftentimes he is inferior in weight to his councillors and officers, and even a slave may refuse to obey him. Instances are, the Kafir races, Umyamwezi, Karagwah, Yoruba, and others, in which, like those of Maskat, Yemen, and most parts of Arabia, the regal power is sometimes almost obliterated. The last and lowest are rude republics, in which a kind of autonomy prevails: they are chiefly found amongst the Bedouin tribes, the hill people, and the jungle races of Asia and Africa.

To the second of this category belongs the government of Abeokuta, a weak constitutional monarchy, blighted by the checks and limits which were intended to prevent its luxuriance. The king commands in his own town, but nowhere else, like the magistrate of a Swiss canton—to which, indeed, the state of Abeokuta may fitly be compared—and his orders hardly extend within gunshot. His is a monarchy engrafted upon the old barbarous patriarchal rule. The chiefs and councillors, more formidable than the barons in King John’s day, are bound, though they often refuse, to render suit and service to their suzerain. Ancient tradition is their statute law, which, amongst civilized people, sanctions the most arbitrary injustice, and which breeds a hundred tyrants instead of one. Their king is also fettered by the laws of the land, of which the Ogbonis are the conservators and exponents. He and his council may act in judicial proceedings, or the case may be carried before the Ogbonis in lodge assembled, or, if generally important, it may be decided by a ‘monster meeting’ of the lieges. No treaty or agreement is valid, unless ratified by all those who have a voice in it. No ordinance against witch torture or human sacrifice would be respected, unless the bill pass through the House of Lords, viz., the Bale,[160] with the chiefs, civil and military; the head fetishmen, who are the peers spiritual; the select elders, who are the law officers of the crown; and the House of Commons, or Ogboni lodges. A subject transgressing such law would put himself under the protection of a chief, and then, unless the popular voice be unanimous, he cannot be punished. ‘An Englishman’s house is his castle,’ says the European proverb. ‘Every man is king in his own house,’ is the less moderate Yoruban saying. It will now be clear to the reader how much can be expected from civilized treaties and conventions with such barbarians.

After this long digression, return we to the Alake’s visit.

‘Shouts of applause ran rattling to the skies’

in most discordant music, whilst a braying of horns and a beating of tom-toms, giving notice of his Majesty’s arrival, brought us all to the compound’s gate. The procession was not imposing. First came the family- chair or stool; it was probably a common framework of bamboo, hidden by a cloth of coarse red serge. This ‘venerable utensil’ was accompanied by the Akpesis and other chiefs, who ominously seemed thus to pay more attention to it than to its master; so amongst Moslems the turban often fares better than the wearer. Succeeded a few lads carrying drawn knives and coarse swords; they acted cutlass boys or pages to the Alake. The great man himself appeared under an umbrella of huge dimensions, inferior only to the little tent under which the King of Ashanti walks in state: the material was a glaring pink silk, with a heavy red fringe, and it was bran new, as the paper lingering about the wires showed. During the visit it was placed outside, against the house-wall, and its accidental fall was followed by the sound of cudgelling, and the normal results. The Alake was habited in the larger fez, with its band of blue beads, and he tottered along with difficulty under a ponderous robe of scarlet velvet—in shape somewhat like the proctor’s at Alma Mater—worn over an Ewu ágbadá or Guinea-fowl pattern of similar shape, but of less gorgeous hue. He propped himself on a beaded staff, some five feet long—canes and swords here do the duty of European cards and Asiatic signets[161]—and he flirted a white fly-whisk, with beaded handle, but without the little bells. His pantaloons were of purple velvet, with a broad stripe of the veriest tinsel gold, and his carpet slippers were fringed round with black monkey’s skin, reminding one of the ‘pair, large enough for an elephant,’ worn by that dread Nigerian potentate who declared all embarkation in a canoe to be essentially unkingly. Never before was such an old ‘Guy’ seen. Being very fond of children, he led by the hand a son and heir; the boy was by no means plain, and was dressed somewhat after the fashion of his papa. Around them pressed a multitude of wives and slave girls, with bare heads, and hair dressed melon-wise, coral necklaces, and bosoms veiled with white cloths, over which, at the waist, were fastened sacques of black and variegated cotton velvets, girt with light-coloured kerchiefs. The harem was accompanied by the _hoi polloi_, cowrie-bag bearers and other officials of the household, armed with huge black whips of hippopotamus hide, decorated with brass tacks. The total might have been eighty souls, and they all crowded into one not large room. The atmosphere soon became that of a slave-ship.

After _com’liments_—to use the customary initial formula of diplomatic communication in these regions—which were acknowledged by the chief protruding his tongue, he sat down, handed his _chob_ or stick of office to an attendant, placed the son between his knees, and became the central point of a female semicircle. The eldest wife, a gaunt old woman, standing bolt upright behind him, supported his upper regions with both hands upon his shoulders, and occasionally passed a yellow bandanna over his pearl-studded face and neck. Two others, on his right and left, used cow-skin fans: when undue warmth troubled the great man’s body, he raised his arms high in the air, threw off the wide sleeves, and directed the cooling draught to be applied where most wanted. The rest grouped themselves near the wall, in a crescent, open to the front. Commander Bedingfield sat down opposite the Alake, Mr. Eales on the right of his chief officer, whilst I took my place in the rear for the purpose of easier sketching. The chiefs ranged themselves round Mr. Wike’s room, crowding on the chairs and sofas, and looking daggers if compelled to squat, as they do at home, upon the floor. The usual _afiyah_ and _amin_—these words sounded like signs of ‘a good time coming’—concluded, the palaver proceeded, the interlocutors being ‘the captain,’ through Lagos Williams, who, having lately been made an Ogboni, had become ultra-Egba; the Akpesi, and at times the Alake.

The subject of the human sacrifice was again brought upon the _tapis_. As has been said, when the Awajali of Ode dies, his servants are slain. Lately an attendant youth, seeing the royal personage likely to ‘hop the twig,’ endeavoured to make his escape in time. He was seized, however, and history is silent as to his fate.

I need hardly enlarge upon the national duty of putting down with a strong hand such abominations as those of Abeokuta and Ode. The late Mr. M‘Gregor Laird describes moral suasion in Africa as a twenty-four pounder, with British seamen behind it; and Mr. Consul Hutchinson equally happily defined an English official’s moral force to be a moral farce without a gun-boat. When children require the stick, we apply it; when adults misbehave themselves, we put them in irons; and if Africa, Western or Eastern, requires the twenty-four pounder and the gun-boat, we ought not to withhold them from her.

England is passing from one phase of sentiment into another. Before the mutiny of the mild Hindu, all was ordered to be _suaviter in modo_, till the natives, our respectable ‘fellow-subjects,’ were petted and spoiled by over-indulgence. In those fiery times we found that the _fortiter in re_—measures which, a year before, would have provoked a national shudder—was necessary to our very existence. In the due admixture of both, the _narm_ and the _garm_—as the people have it—the rough and the smooth, the bakhshish and the bastinado, lies the secret of preserving the health of the Asiatic and African body politic. The old trader was not so far wrong who advised his friends, when dealing with a ‘black fellow,’ to hold out one hand for shaking, and to keep the other ready for knocking down.

The Akpesi of Eruwan again explained—without a word of truth—that the human sacrifice in question was the work, not of Abeokutans, but solely of men from Ife and Ikisi. But Commander Bedingfield, who now knew the whole affair, simply replied that he was shocked at such an event; that it was a step in the wrong direction; that it would be a hard nut for the English people to crack, and that the Alake should not have allowed it.

A little lying on the part of the natives ensued, when it was broken off by the sudden irruption of Mr., Mrs., and Master Gollmer, and Messrs. Wilcoxon and Roper, of the Church Missionary Society. The first- mentioned did not fail to impress us carefully and intelligibly with a sense of the high honour conferred upon us by the presence of the Alake. All Windsor Castle in the house of a subject would hardly have produced an equal amount of congratulation. Master Gollmer was politely received by the young prince, who was about the size of a small French poodle; but the European juvenile, alarmed at the novelty of the scene, began to boo-hoo in a style which soon caused the precipitate retreat of the party. We resumed the palaver.

Many solemn promises of reform, not to be broken, as the phrase is, till the next opportunity, were voluntarily given to us. The Akpesi then observed that it might be the wish of Englishmen not to behead criminals; that yesterday we had been looking at and ‘writing’ the skulls, and so forth.

This was easily settled. Legal executions are not yet objected to by the civilized people of England. _C’est incroyable, mais c’est vrai_.

The Akpesi then referred to the correspondence from Lagos, which he insisted had been far from courteous, and which he said had been answered in a similar spirit. The fact is, they did not say so, but they could not get over the charge of having pulled a beast’s whiskers.

Commander Bedingfield suggested _bona verba_, remarking that _litera scripta manet_, and that civility, is a _sine quâ non_ in official correspondence.

The Akpesi then uprose and spoke as he was wont—_submissè, temperatè, granditer_. He ran through a brief history of the white men who had visited Abeokuta, beginning with Mr. Townsend and ending with Messrs. Beecroft and Forbes. He then digressed into a little violence touching the Crowthers. Mr. Sam. Crowther, Sen.’s name was Ajai, ‘struggling for life,’ a native of the little village of Ishoggo (Oshogun), who had been taken prisoner in a Fula attack about 1821, and who had been rescued from a Portuguese slaver by H.M.S. ‘Myrmidon,’ Captain, afterwards Sir Henry Leeke. Ajai was therefore still a subject of the Alake, but, from respect for the English, he had been allowed to wear pantaloons, and to call himself an Oibo dudu. Yet his son, Mr. Samuel Crowther, Jun., had proved himself a bitter enemy to his black brethren, or rather masters, by traducing their friend Mr. Townsend. Therefore he had better stay at Lagos; and if he came to Abeokuta, the people would certainly kill him.

The reply was, that the Alake could object for a good and sufficient reason to any one setting foot in his city, but that killing was not to be spoken of, as such an event might lead to serious complications.

‘Then,’ quoth the Akpesi, ‘he—Ajai’s son—shall not come back till Tow’sen’ returns.’

‘Presently,’ replied the captain, ‘we shall know if it be Mr. Townsend’s wish to revisit Abeokuta.’

The Alake, who awaking after a long doze, now wreathed his face with curious smiles, and took up the thread of discourse. His delivery was not pleasant; the loss of his incisors, and the length of his canines, rendered him almost unintelligible. His tongue protruded in a queer, paralytic way. He spoke so low as to be hardly audible, and at times he broke forth into a crone-like chuckle. He spoke with the utmost deliberation, and when he stopped to be fanned and wiped, his _claqueurs_ vociferated the usual cries. He also thought it necessary to go through the history of his white visitors, beginning, not as German savans with the inevitable Adam, but with the siege of Ado, when the acting governor of Lagos first became his enemy. It took place, I may observe, in 1840, or one year before Mr. M‘Coskry came to the coast. He ended with Mr. Foote and the attack on Porto Novo. ‘White men,’ said the Alake, ‘have stood before me in three forms—missionaries, war-men, and merchants. Missionaries are good men who ‘teach book,’ and who dissuade people from slavery and sacrifice, exhorting them to live in peace and quiet, but never meddling with their neighbours’ business. (!) War-men are also good men; their trade is to fight, and yet they fight for order, not to gratify their own passions; they harm no one but enemies; they are heroes—they are giants. As for merchants, they come to get what they can; they care for nothing but cowries; they trade with a man, and his enemy—in fact,’ said the Alake, raising his voice, ‘they are liars and rascals.’ N.B.—Two members of this unjustly abused body were sitting in the room, and one was looking uncommonly glum. ‘As for the Oibo dudu’—the white-blacks, or Sierra Leonites—resumed the king, ‘I must call them even worse than the merchants.’[162] After this ebullition of feeling Okokenu ran over all the Ibadan war; how the Ibadans had intrigued with Lagos and with Fallun—King Dosumo’s string-puller—how they had brought Dahome to war with him, and how they had slaughtered his Ijayan friends. Could he be at peace with such people? Finally, he again warned us to write to England, that Agbome was engaged in the sacrifices preliminary to a commando. This may be true:[163] that amiable people are mustered at the end of every wet season for the annual slave hunt; the king then inspects the force, makes all preparations and forms a camp always away from the place which he purposes to attack. The next step is a rapid raid, direction unknown.

Breakfast was being placed on the table, and at noon the palaver ceased, the king retiring in state under the salute of trade muskets, which, loaded like chambers, were fired from the hip. The next day was fixed for signing the reformed treaty. These people, I have said, will sign everything, but they have no idea of keeping anything.

In the evening, the chiefs, privily meeting Commander Bedingfield, consented to append more stringent clauses to the treaty concluded in 1852 by Commander Forbes, and left him well contented. He had expected another summons from the king, but, fortunately for us, it did not come. The day ended with another fierce tornado, and a steamy heat, which fully accounts for the complexion of the European and the Europeaness at Abeokuta. Physiologists inform us that blue and green are not found in the human skin; I have now seen both—aye, and yellow-green, too.

This chapter will conclude with an account of the strategy and the military force of the Egbas. The admirable report of the late Captain Jones has been my principal authority.

War in Yoruba is carried on much as it was in India some two centuries ago. There is no regular army, but each chief has his armed retainers like the Highland clansmen, and these form the force. After an ‘Oro- palaver,’ which sometimes lasts three days, when the time and place of rendezvous are settled upon, the warriors march out, with the usual mob of sutlers carrying their beds and provisions upon their heads, and laden with arms and ammunition. They march better even than Spaniards or Portuguese, and they can easily get over forty miles in twenty-four hours. When the quarrel is not very popular, an edict threatens all who lag behind with the loss of their heads. Those who cannot afford horses, walk—after Nelson’s saying, ‘Let the man trudge it who has lost his budget.’

The warriors arm themselves. Their principal weapons are ‘buccaneer guns,’ called ‘long Danes,’ because first imported from the Gold Coast: these are large flint pieces in gaily-painted stocks, costing in England from seven to ten shillings each, and here seven to eight gallons of palm-oil = fourteen to sixteen shillings. Africans rarely, if ever, pay anything like a decent price for muskets. The process of firing is peculiar, the gun being either discharged from the hip, or held out at arm’s length, with averted face, for good reason; the kick is that of an ass, and it would lay open even Deaf Burke’s cheek. The state finds a coarse powder, mostly exported from Boston, more than three parts charcoal, and of this two hands’ breadth is the usual charge; the bullets are bolts of bar-iron, cast and cut by the blacksmiths. Pistols are rarely worn; spears and bows and arrows are little used. Swords seem intended principally to hack and hew the wounded and dead. A few, especially Moslems, have straight, double-edged blades, with brass handles and leather scabbards, from which they are drawn with difficulty, and only Arabs use the scimitar or curved blade. Bowie knives have of late formed an article of importation, and are found handy. The only artillery consists of wall-pieces, about 1½ inch bore, crammed with a handful of bolts or nails, fired from a rest, and easily transported from place to place. Rockets are as yet unknown; these and case-shot would be found uncommonly serviceable.

Arrived at the field of action, the Egba army’s proceedings explain the phrases ‘going out to war, sitting down, and encamping before a town.’ They select ground about three-quarters of an hour’s march from the place to be attacked, generally choosing the bank of a stream. The first operation is to dig a scarpless, narrow ditch, facing towards the fields. The earth thrown out is mixed with water, and made into a swish parapet, which, besides wanting height and thickness, is weakened by round loop-holes. A rain-thatch is then placed over it, and at certain points scaffoldings are prepared for sentinels and look-out men, only the chiefs having spyglasses.

This part of the encampment being concluded, the warriors house themselves. The camp is laid out without streets, the rule being for the retainers to live pell-mell near their chief. The huts are built with four corner-posts, two forked poles support the ridge of the roof, which is composed of three large bars with smaller between, the whole being covered with grass or matting. These places are laid out generally in three rooms, the centre for reception, and the two sides for sleeping and storing. Compounds are often attached, and in the rear, away from the enemy, they prepare fields of maize and beans. The siege may last for years, and commissariat there is none: women and camp-followers attend to hold bazars; provisions are sometimes sent from the town; and when ‘provaunt’ fails the warriors walk home.

There is no attempt at uniform. The soldiers wear shogoto—knickerbockers—or waist-cloths, and war jackets, striped blue, white, and red. The bullet-bag is neatly made of leather, far inferior, however, to Mandenga or Morocco work. The powder-flask is either a calabash or a skin bottle, the latter often having the hair outside. The accoutrements hang from the right shoulder to the left side. The chiefs are elaborately dressed, with teeth cowries and a multitude of talismans sewn upon their garments and accoutrements. Being thus somewhat conspicuous, they avoid the danger of discouraging their men by a rare prudence when under fire. Like the North American Indians, the Egbas ignore defensive armour: a few Wilkinson’s coats of mail worn under the dress would soon turn the tide of battle.

The army, it will be observed, is wholly infantry, and the actions are settled by skirmishers and light troops. Though here and there a man fights on horseback, it seems never to have occurred to these people to organize a troop; yet there are animals enough in the country to form an excellent light cavalry, and irregulars are much wanted. The temper of the beasts, however, would require them to be Rareyfied or prepared for discipline by such treatment as was adopted in the Poonah Horse, Western India.

There is an attempt to divide the army into a resemblance of the civilized brigade and the regiment, under the several chiefs: moreover, the Egbas do not wholly ignore the use of the reserve. Both parties are perfectly well acquainted with each other’s movements, many men having in both camps friends to whom they are bound by oath. It will sometimes happen that a chief refuses to go forth to war, pleading brotherhood with the enemy; and the reason is rarely disregarded.

Before an action begins, bribes are freely given to learn the strength of the enemy, his health, his spirit, and his number; all manner of false reports—now the intention of a retreat, then the advent of an auxiliary—fly about, like Crimean shaves, to little purpose. Ambushes are tried, and invariably fail. After this preliminary the hosts find themselves embattled opposite each other as unwillingly as in the præ- Napoleonic German wars, when it was the general’s great object to avoid the enemy. The chiefs tree themselves, and receive reports in the rear, not unlike a certain commander-in-chief in Crim-Tartary—most unlike him who never said _Ite_, but _Venite_, or his Chinese equivalent[164] the great Wang. The action begins by ordering a corps from each brigade or division to the fore. Instead, however, of charging—bayonets are unknown—they spread out in open order, skirmishing till their ammunition is exhausted, and then retiring to ask for more in the rear. At times A. feigns a retreat, and B. advances, perhaps sufficiently to produce a hot fire, but never so far as to reach the enemy’s walls, which he instinctively fears. If there be any danger of a hand-to-hand fight B. then retires, and A., in his turn, advances. No one dreams of outflanking more than of charging home, and the reserve sits quietly, as did the commissariat behind the sand-heaps at the ‘Battle of Meeanee.’ Even platoon firing is unknown. This kind of Champ de Mars work is kept up till sunset, when both hosts wend homewards to sup, dance, boast hugely, and claim the victory. A Sikh review in the olden days, when the followers of Nanak Shah disdained to sponge their guns or to box their ammunition, was a bloody affair compared with a pitched battle in Yoruba; and a single civilized regiment would, I should say, scatter an army.

After ten thousand rounds the dead are counted by units, the wounded by tens. The ‘battle of Ijaye’ was fought by seventeen thousand men: of these, five were killed and fifty were hurt. From the weapons used we could hardly expect otherwise. In the campaigns of the first Napoleon a man’s own weight in powder, and ten times his weight in lead, were consumed for each individual placed _hors de combat_ by their ridiculous musket. In 1851 Brown Bess expended at the Cape three thousand two hundred rounds to each Kafir, and in the Crimea the French fired away five millions of small-arm cartridges without killing twenty-five thousand Russians. It is becoming the belief of military men that the use of arms of precision, cannon and rifles, assisted by skill and practice, will eventually settle the fate of campaigns—which remains to be seen. But at any rate a reliable weapon is an absolute necessity to the soldier. It might not be advisable to arm the Egbas with Enfield rifles, Prince’s breech-loaders, and Colt’s revolvers; still they might supply themselves with sound Tower muskets and bayonets, with tolerable sabres for their horsemen, and with pikes for a select body, which, forming in column, would take that initiative in which all are so notably deficient. These people have a modicum of invention, and a total want of progressive power. It is as if a certain amount of knowledge is spontaneously evolved by them, and then ceases.

The Egba army fought at a considerable disadvantage at the time when Captain Jones was present. The commander-in-chief, His Highness Ogubonna, had won a certain prestige by his conduct in 1851 against Dahome. He was, however, a very old man, said to be seventy—equal to ninety in England, gross, effete, wholly addicted to women, and rarely in the habit of leaving his hut. Yet it is the deliberate opinion of Captain Jones that, with all its faults of commission and omission, Abeokuta is ‘capable of carrying on an offensive war against any neighbouring native power.’

The tactic to be used against this people is that which never yet failed in India; and the superiority of European weapons would at once give the victory to a civilized force. All our disasters in the East have been caused by abandoning the one true and easy system—an opening by a hot fire of artillery, round shot, howitzers, and rockets; a steady advance of infantry in masses, covered by sharpshooters; and, finally, a rush of cavalry to cut down the fugitives and to render the rout complete.

It is at present our policy in these regions to maintain the strictest neutrality. We have hitherto been persuaded to side with the Abeokutans, thinking that they were engaged in a defensive when they were really waging an offensive war. The great variety of tribes to whom the broad lands of Yoruba belong are all willing, in their several degrees, to become our ‘faithful friends and allies;’ and we shall have no difficulty in keeping them so. The object of each is of course to monopolize our amity and assistance for the pure purpose of self- aggrandizement, and to the prejudice of its neighbours. Peace with us, however, would be its object when nothing is to be gained by war.

It will wholly conduce to proper relations with the interior when we have a sufficient armed force at Lagos. The Egbas, like the people of the West African coast generally, have persuaded themselves that the English are invincible at sea, and upon the seaboard, where their ships’ guns can be brought to bear, but that they are no soldiers. This is the first lesson that should be taught them. Europeans are unnecessary, except as officers, and the Upper Yoruba country, with Hausa and Burnu, supplies an admirable material for native soldiers. The province of Lagos will hold a very different standing in the country when provided, not, as proposed, with two hundred men, but with a weak troop of light irregular cavalry, a battery of field artillery, and a small regiment of four hundred infantry.

[Footnote 159: So Darius (Dan. vi. 13-15), unable to change the ‘custom’ which he had established, could kill but not spare.]

[Footnote 160: The Bale of a town is its governor, subject only to the king. In each house there is a Bale or householder. Like the king, these Bales also have their associates or lieutenants.]

[Footnote 161: Similarly, in the olden times of England, a stick called Irmin Sule or the Pillar of Irmin, and sacred to Thor, was used in musters.]

[Footnote 162: H.M. was not so far wrong. The following, which is an exact copy of a letter addressed to Dr. Harrison, will show what is going on at Abeokuta on the part of the Sierra Leone settlers:—

_‘To the Editor of the Iwe Irohin._

‘_Lagos, Sept. 28th_, 1861.

‘DEAR SIR,

‘Sorry you have not inserted the whole of our defence against such
notorious falsehood of the W. African of the 26th May.

‘But as you take upon yourselves to refute our defence. We therefore pray you most earnestly to proof the fact, who is this Sierra Leone Emigrants that thus denie, that he is not an emigrant from Sierra Leone, and in the next place to proof, which of the Sierra Leone Emigrants, has at any time claimed to be tried by native law, which is another error, which you must either proof or correct.

‘We belief that whatever is inserted in any such paper for public perusal, must be true and nothing but the truth.

‘We are not forced by the late Consul Foote to register our names as you imagine.

‘With regard to a S. Woman who you said to be exacting five strings out of seven from a boy slave who was servant to a whiteman “Pray Messrs. Editors,” It is in your place to report such one to H.B.M. Consul and to be punished, and if not, you can name such one, but not to charge the whole population with an offence committed by a single individual. It was in order to distinguish one man from another was the reason a name given to every man.

‘We remain, dear Sir,

‘Your Obedient Servants,

‘THE SIERRA LEONE EMIGRANTS.

‘P.S.—Pray to insert the whole of the above.’]

[Footnote 163: It was true, but the attack was not directed against Abeokuta. Early in the ensuing spring King Baddahun, with six thousand warriors, fell upon Ishagga, which had treacherously attacked his father. The plans were well laid, and the place was surprised; only sixteen men defending themselves, the others flying to a bush a quarter of a mile from the town. The Dahomans slew some five hundred souls and carried off the church bell, the catechist Doherty, and seventeen or eighteen converts of both sexes, natives and Sierra Leonites. This is the fifth Egbado town destroyed during the Ibadan war, the others being Jigá, Mashaye, Shampa, and Igo.]

[Footnote 164: This general, after tying up his beard in two knots, would take a sabre in each hand, and filling up the rear of his men, so lustily belabour all who hung back, that the Chinese terrified rush never failed to secure the victory.]