dent during the "Little Adai Custom," as it was called, and understood that in one day upwards of seventy victims had been sacrificed in the palace alone. He was not present; but, waiting on the king immediately after, saw his clothes stained with blood, the royal death-stool yet reeking, various amulets steeped in gore, while a spot on the brow of his majesty and his principal chiefs indicated the work in which they had been engaged.

The government of Cape Coast Castle unfortunately did not ratify the treaty concluded by M. Dupuis, but undertook to support the Fantees in an attempt to throw off the Ashantee yoke. They were thus involved in hostilities with the latter people, whose sovereign, in January, 1824, entered Fantee with a force of 15,000 men. Sir Charles M'Carthy, newly appointed governor, being ill-informed as to the strength of the enemy, marched out to meet him with a force of scarcely a thousand British, supported by a crowd of cowardly and undisciplined auxiliaries. The two armies met near the boundary stream of the Bossompra, where the English, soon deserted by their native allies, in whose cause they had taken the field, maintained the contest for some time with characteristic valour, till it was discovered that, through the negligence of the ordnance-keeper, the supply of powder was entirely exhausted. Thus deprived of the use of fire-arms, they were surrounded by the immensely superior numbers of a warlike and desperate enemy, and after a fearful contest, the particulars of which never fully transpired, the whole army either perished on the field, or underwent the more cruel fate of captivity in the hands of this merciless foe. Only

three officers, all of whom were wounded, brought the dreadful tale to Cape Coast Castle. The Ashantees then overran the whole open country, laid siege to the castle, and pressed it closely for some months. Being repeatedly checked, however, and suffering under sickness and want of provisions, they retreated into their own country; nor has the king, distracted by the rebellion of some neighbouring states, ever since attempted to march down upon the coast.

Captain Adams, in the course of a trading voyage along the African shore, visited Benin, the capital of which is situated on a river coming from the north-east. The city is large, apparently containing about 15,000 inhabitants, and surrounded by a country extremely fertile, but not highly cultivated. The King of Benin is Fetiche,-worshipped by his subjects as a god, and must not on any account be supposed either to eat or sleep. Heresy against this creed is punished in the most prompt and summary manner, by instantly striking off the head of the unbeliever. With all his divine and royal attributes, however, the king does not disdain the occupation of a merchant, and drives a hard bargain while exchanging slaves and ivory for tobacco, which is a favourite luxury in this part of Africa. He is very accessible to strangers, provided they spread before him as a present a handsome piece of red silk damask. Human sacrifices are not practised to the same dreadful extent as in some other parts of Africa; yet a considerable number are offered on the graves of their great men, and four annually at the mouth of the river, as an amulet to attract vessels; but such is the pestilential character of the

climate, that this bloody charm brings now comparatively few slave-merchants to Benin.

Captain Adams ascended also to Waree, an insular territory, enclosed by two branches of another stream flowing through this alluvial district. It is beautiful as well as fertile, is about five miles in circuit, and appears as if it had dropped down from the clouds; for all the surrounding shores consist of an impenetrable forest, rising out of a swamp. Even in the dry season the water stands on the ground a foot in depth, producing exhalations which prove excessively destructive to the European constitution, as well as to all the more delicate plants and animals that happen to be removed from the drier soils of the interior. In other respects, this intelligent navigator did not make any material addition to the knowledge of Western Africa previously derived from other sources.

CHAPTER XV.

Southern and Eastern Africa.

To

THE Southern extremity of Africa has long attracted the particular attention of modern navigators. pass this mighty cape formed the main object of ambition with the Portuguese in their celebrated voyages of discovery along the African coast. After almost a century had been spent in successive endeavours to accomplish that undertaking, Diaz obtained a view of this great promontory; but the stormy sky in which it was enveloped, and the fearful swell produced by the conflict of contending oceans, appalled even that stout navigator. He named it the Cape of Tempests, and immediately returned with his shattered barks to Portugal. The king, with a bolder spirit, substituted forthwith the name of Cape of Good Hope, which it has ever since retained; yet some years elapsed before the daring sails of Gama rounded this formidable barrier, and bore across the ocean to the golden shores of India.

The Portuguese, engrossed by the discovery and conquest of the kingdoms of the east, and busied in lading their vessels with the produce of those vast and opulent regions, scarcely deigned to cast an eye on the rude border of Southern Africa, its terraces of granite, its naked Karroo plains, or the filthy and

miserable kraals of the Hottentot. Their fleets, indeed, stopped occasionally for water and refreshments; but no attempts were made to occupy, and still less to colonize, this barren and unpromising country.

The Dutch, a prudent and calculating people, having pushed their way into the Indian seas, where they first rivalled and then supplanted the Portuguese, were not long in discovering the important advantage that might be derived from the Cape as a naval station. In 1650, they founded Cape Town, -a step which led to farther improvement; for it thereby became necessary that supplies of grain and provisions should be drawn from the surrounding country. When, moreover, it was discovered that on some neighbouring hills the vine could be reared in high perfection, a new value was stamped upon the settlement. The natives, not then destitute of bravery, but ill-armed, undisciplined, and disunited, were easily driven back by the colonists, or reduced to an almost complete and hopeless bondage; and hence the country, for several hundred miles in every direction, so far as it afforded any herbage, was soon covered with extensive grazing farms under Dutch masters.

Peter Kolben, who resided some years at the Cape, published a narrative, which, though it be liable to a few exceptions, gives us by far the fullest account of the Hottentots, before that race was completely weighed down by European oppression. This unfortunate tribe has become noted and almost proverbial for presenting man in his lowest estate, and under the closest alliance with the inferior orders of creation. It must, indeed, be admitted, that they take