The Scenery On The Borders Of The River Appeared Wild And Striking, Though Not Magnificent.

In the delicious moonshine it was far from uninteresting:

The banks were low and partially covered with stunted trees, but a slave factory and, a fetish hut were the only buildings which were observed on them. They could not help admiring at some distance ahead of their canoe, when the windings of the river would permit, a noble and solitary palm tree with its lofty branches bending over the water's edge; to them it was not unlike a majestical plume of feathers nodding over the head of a beautiful lady.

Proceeding about ten miles in a westerly direction, they suddenly turned up a branch joining the river from the northward, passing on the left the village of Bawie, at which Captain Clapperton landed. They saw several small islands covered with rank grass, interspersed in different parts of the river. They were inhabited by myriads of frogs, whose noise was more hoarse and stunning than ever proceeded from any rookery in Christendom. As they went up the river the canoe men spoke to their priests, who were invisible to them, in a most sepulchral tone of voice, and were answered in the same unearthly and doleful manner. These sounds formed their nocturnal serenade. Notwithstanding the novelty of their situation and the interest they took in the objects, which surrounded them, they were so overcome with fatigue, that they wrapped a flannel around them, and fell fast asleep.

The hard and uncomfortable couch, on which they had reposed the preceding night, made their bodies quite sore, and occasioned them to awake at a very early hour in the morning. At six o'clock A.M. they found themselves still upon the river, and their canoe gliding imperceptibly along. From half a mile in width, and in many places much more, the river had narrowed to about twenty paces; marine plants nearly covered its surface, and marsh miasmata, loaded with other vapours of the most noxious quality, ascended from its borders like a thick cloud. Its smell was peculiarly offensive. In about an hour afterwards, they arrived at the extremity of the river, into which flowed a stream of clear water. Here the canoe was dragged over a morass into a deep but narrow rivulet, so narrow indeed that it was barely possible for the canoe to float, without being entangled in the branches of a number of trees, which were shooting up out of the water. Shortly after, they found it to widen a little; the marine plants and shrubs disappeared altogether, and the boughs of beautiful trees, which hung over the banks, overshadowed them in their stead, forming an arch-like canopy, impervious to the rays of the sun. The river and the lesser stream abound with alligators and hippopotami, the wild ducks and a variety of other aquatic birds resorting to them in considerable numbers. In regard to the alligator, a singular fraud is committed by the natives of the coast, who collect the alligators' eggs in great numbers, and being in their size and make exactly resembling the eggs of the domestic fowl, they intermix them, and sell them at the markets as the genuine eggs of the fowls; thus many an epicure in that part of the world, who luxuriates over his egg at breakfast, fancying that it has been laid by some good wholesome hen, finds, to his mortification, that he has been masticating the egg of so obnoxious an animal as the alligator.

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