From Chatham, I made the best of my way to Portsmouth-harbour.  A very formidable task presented itself here.  But the masters’ boats were ready for me; and I continued my pursuit.  On boarding the Pegase, on the second day, I discovered a very respectable person in the gunner of that ship.  His name was George Millar.  He had been on board the Canterbury slave-ship at the dreadful massacre at Calabar.  He was the only disinterested evidence living, of whom I had yet heard.  He expressed his willingness to give his testimony, if his presence should be thought necessary in London.  I then continued my pursuit for the remainder of the day.  On the next day, I resumed and finished it for this quarter.  I had now examined the different persons in more than a hundred vessels in this harbour, but I had not discovered the person I had gone to seek.

Matters now began to look rather disheartening, I mean, as far as my grand object was concerned.  There was but one other port left, and this was between two and three hundred miles distant.  I determined however to go to Plymouth.  I had already been more successful in this tour, with respect to obtaining general evidence, than in any other of the same length; and the probability was, that, as I should continue to move among the same kind of people, my success would be in a similar proportion according to the number visited.  These were great encouragements to me to proceed.  At length, I arrived at the place of my last hope.  On my first day’s expedition I boarded forty vessels, but found no one in these, who had been on the coast of Africa in the Slave-trade.  One or two had been there in King’s ships; but they had never been on shore.  Things were now drawing near to a close; and, notwithstanding my success as to general evidence in this journey, my heart began to beat.  I was restless and uneasy during the night.  The next morning, I felt agitated again between the alternate pressure of hope and fear; and in this state I entered my boat.  The fifty-seventh vessel, which I boarded in this harbour, was the Melampus frigate.  One person belonging to it, on examining him in the captain’s cabin, said he had been two voyages to Africa; and I had not long discoursed with him, before I found, to my inexpressible joy, that he was the man.  I found too, that he unravelled the question in dispute precisely as our inferences had determined it.  He had been two expeditions up the river Calabar in the canoes of the natives.  In the first of these, they came within a certain distance of a village.  They then concealed themselves under the bushes, which hung over the water from the banks.  In this position they remained during day-light.  But at night they went up to it armed; and seized all the inhabitants, who had not time to make their escape.  They obtained forty-five persons in this manner.  In the second they were out eight or nine days; when they made a similar attempt, and with nearly similar success.  They seized men,