Dogs, Goats, And Other Animals Were Running About The Dirty Streets Half Starved, Whose Hungry Looks Could Only Be Exceeded

By the famishing appearance of the men, women, and children, which bespoke the penury and wretchedness to which they were

Reduced, while the sons of many of them were covered with odious boils, and their huts were falling to the ground from neglect and decay.

Brass, properly speaking, consists of two towns of nearly equal size, containing about a thousand inhabitants each, and built on the borders of a kind of basin, which is formed by a number of rivulets, entering it from the Niger through forests of mangrove bushes. One of them was under the domination of a noted scoundrel, called King Jacket, to whom a former allusion has been made, and the other was governed by a rival chief, named King Forday. These towns are situated directly opposite each other, and within the distance of eighty yards, and are built on a marshy ground, which occasions the huts to be always wet. Another place, called Pilot's Town by Europeans, from the number of pilots that reside in it, is situated nearly at the mouth of the first Brass River, which the Landers understood to be the "Nun" River of the Europeans, and at the distance of sixty or seventy miles from hence. This town acknowledges the authority of both kings, having been originally peopled by settlers from each of their towns. At the ebb of the tide, the basin is left perfectly dry, with the exception of small gutters, and presents a smooth and almost unvaried surface of black mud, which emits an intolerable odour, owing to the decomposition of vegetable substances, and the quantity of filth and nastiness which is thrown into the basin by the inhabitants of both towns. Notwithstanding this nuisance, both children and grown-up persons may be seen sporting in the mud, whenever the tide goes out, all naked, and amusing themselves in the same manner, as if they were on shore.

The Brass people grow neither yams, nor bananas, nor grain of any kind, cultivating only the plantain as an article of food, which, with the addition of a little fish, forms their principal diet. Yams, however, are frequently imported from Eboe, and other countries by the chief people, who resell great quantities of them to the shipping that may happen to be in the river. They are enabled to do this by the very considerable profits which accrue to them from their trading transactions with people residing further inland, and from the palm oil which they themselves manufacture, and which they dispose of to the Liverpool traders. The soil in the vicinity of Brass is, for the most part, poor and marshy, though it is covered with a rank, luxuriant and impenetrable vegetation. Even in the hands of an active, industrious race, it would offer almost insuperable obstacles to general cultivation; but, with its present possessory, the mangrove itself can never be extirpated, and the country will, it is likely enough, maintain its present appearance till the end of time.

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