Chapter IV

[Footnote 20: The Yerewa is called by the people ‘Ado river,’ and in our maps Jefferson river. The Okpara is better known as the Ajirá creek or Carr river, and is about fourteen miles east of Porto Novo.]

[Footnote 21: In Eastern Africa the bamboo reed may be found many days’ march from the coast, but it is supposed to be derived from India.]

[Footnote 22: At Sierra Leone there is the same belief touching the monkey-bread, or calabash.]

[Footnote 23: In Northern Europe ablactation begins when the milk teeth appear, between the sixth and the twelfth month; near the Mediterranean, however, this is by no means the case.]

[Footnote 24: When the late king, Eyo Honesty, of Old Calabar river, resolved to adopt the single-wife system, the chosen one determined on a certain occasion to act as if she had been an unit in the normal score. Mrs. W——, the wife of one of the Scotch Presbyterian missionaries was directed—when the husband laid his complaint before them—to call upon the queen, and to bring her majesty to a finer sense of her conjugal duties. The labour of love was, however, I believe in vain.]

[Footnote 25: Quoted _in extenso_ in ‘The City of the Saints.’]

[Footnote 26: Some travellers, for instance, Dr. Vogel, of the first Niger expedition, write the word ‘cocoa,’ which renders the confusion of a vegetable with a shrub and a tree inevitable to the English reader. I shall therefore write the vegetable ‘koko,’ the shrub ‘cacao,’ and the tree ‘cocoa.’ Dr. Clarke, of Sierra Leone, mentions three kinds of koko: firstly, the West Indian, or English; secondly, ‘country koko,’ acrid, and affecting the throat; and thirdly, ‘water koko,’ said to be a poisonous root.]

[Footnote 27: An exercise known as Taketi, pronounced ‘Tackety,’ after the style of ‘rickety.’ When the white man hears in the streets Jo and Taketi, he will understand that the infant population are requesting him to dance and tumble for their delectation. It is said that an Egbanized Englishman, lately proceeding up the river, was seized by the Abeokutans, and compelled to ‘Tackety’ for their amusement, whilst they looked on and drank his rum.]

[Footnote 28: Ekko—pronounced ekkau—is maize ground very fine, steeped in water till subacid, when the grosser particles are removed with the hand—they fatten poultry well—and the residue, boiled and eaten warm, resembles the Scottish oatmeal sowens. If kept till cold it hardens into a paste the consistency of blanc-mange; it becomes a cooling and nutritious diet, and plantain-leaved triangles of this article may be seen in every market throughout Yoruba. At Sierra Leone it is called aggidi.]

[Footnote 29: ‘The larger ants have been known to strip bare to the bone the carcase of a cow in a single night. And Mr. Abson informed me, that he was once reduced to that state of debility by a severe attack of fever, as to be so wholly helpless, that the ants attacked him in the night, when lying in his bed; and that if, fortunately, one of his domestics had not awoke, they would have devoured him before morning, so incapable was he of calling for help or struggling with his assailants. At the time he related this anecdote to me, I was confined by indisposition in the very room where the circumstance occurred, and did not feel very comfortable at the prospect of being perhaps eaten alive.’—Capt. JOHN ADAMS, p. 68. After this, I need hardly point out to the collector of natural history the easiest way of cleaning a skeleton in Africa.]

[Footnote 30: Dr. Haran, of H.M.S. ‘Brisk,’ was kind enough to show me a fine specimen of a cinchona bark, procured at Madagascar. Dr. Livingstone, however, is supposed to have seen quinine for the first time at Kew Gardens.]

[Footnote 31: On my return to England in the spring of 1859, the Rev. Mr. Monk, who afterwards took a prominent part in the Oxford and Cambridge Missions, honoured me by asking my opinion upon the subject, and I will appeal to that gentleman if all that was told him in reply did or did not come to pass.]

[Footnote 32: To make my meaning plainer, I must state my belief that the great South African explorer—whose geographical feats needed no missionary foil—has owned privately to friends that he never made a Kafir convert, and consequently that he could hardly have expected to make one.]

[Footnote 33: Ferries are profitable investments in these lands. My factotum, Selim Aga, tells me of one over the Niger, near Rabba, now reopened down the river by Masaba, _i.e._ Mohammed Saba, King of Nupe, who charges 1000 cowries there = 1_s._ 6_d._, for each traveller in the caravan, 1000 cowries for each tusk, and sundry fees for horses and mules.]

[Footnote 34: Our itinerary makes the distance from Lagos to the Agboi Creek 2 hours’ row = 8 miles. From the creek to the Ogun River, 3 h. 25 m. = 7 miles. From the juncture to Igaon, 3 h. 15 m. = 9 miles. Total of first day, 26 miles.

From Igaon to Mabban, second day, 6 hours = 18 miles.

From Mabban to Takpana, third day, 8 hours = 22 miles.

From Takpana to Agbameya, 3 h. 30 m. = 9 miles. From Agbameya to Abeokuta, 6 miles. Total of fourth day, 15 miles.

Thus the grand total from Lagos to Abeokuta would be 81 miles, of which 64 were upon the Ogun River, and the direct distance between the cities might be reduced to 48 miles. Mr. Bowen, however, makes the journey by river from Abeokuta to Lagos 90 miles.

Abeokuta has been laid down by Mr. Townsend in N. lat. 7° 8′, and E. long. 3° 20′; the height is about 567 feet by barometer above sea level, whilst the mountains at the head of the Ogun River rise, it is believed, to 3000 feet.]