the practicability of securing this man, and offered many excuses to escape the acknowledgment of any responsibility in the matter.  It was clear enough that he wished to protect the assassin, as indeed it was his policy to shield the slavers, whose trade was more lucrative to him, than that of any other class of persons.  Finding himself somewhat embarrassed in the conversation, he made an apology for leaving the vessel, saying he would go on shore and see what could be done, inviting us at the same time to finish the palaver at his house.  Accordingly we all went on shore, after breakfast, attended by two marines.  A second palaver took place, which was merely a repetition of the first, and when it terminated, he presented us with some excellent Champagne, and then exhibited a quantity of fine clothes, with a variety of other articles, all of which he said he had received as presents.  The only dress His Majesty wore, when he came on board, was a cotton cloth round his middle, and a fine white beaver hat, bound with broad gold lace.  Captain Cumings, at our request, asked permission of the Duke to allow us to see his wives, who live in a square formed of mud huts, with a communication from the back part of his house.  The Duke very courteously complied with our wishes, and sent persons to attend us.  There were about sixty Queens, besides little Princes and Princesses, with a number of slave-girls to wait upon them.  His favourite Queen, the handsomest of the royal party, was so large that she could scarcely walk, or even move, indeed they were all prodigiously large, their beauty consisting more in the mass of physique, than in the delicacy or symmetry of features or figure.  This uniform tendancy to en bon point, on an unusual scale, was accounted for, by the singular fact, that the female upon whom His Majesty fixes his regards, is regularly fattened up to a certain standard, previously to the nuptial ceremony, it appearing to be essential to the Queenly dignity that the lady should be enormously fat.  We saw a very fine young woman undergoing this ordeal.  She was sitting at a table, with a large bowl of farinaceous food; which she was swallowing as fast as she could pass the spoon to, and from, the bowl, and her mouth; and she was evidently taking no inconsiderable trouble to qualify herself for that happy state, which Pope tell us is the object of every woman’s ambition, that of being Queen for life, the royal road to which, in this country, lies through a course of gormandizing.  The same custom extends to the wives of the great men, who undergo a similar operation before marriage.  On the morning of their wedding-day they are seated at a table, to receive presents from their relations and friends; a yard of cloth from one, some silk from another, some beads from a third, according to the taste incapacity of the donors.  My companions were not much struck with the beauty of the Queens, for they declared that some of the pretty young slave-girls had much more lovely looks.  Each of the Duke’s wives bring, or send, a jug of water for his large brass-pan bath every morning, and his favourite wife remains to assist in his ablutions.