Thursday, 14.—­ARRIVED in Maidstone Bay, at ten o’clock, when we learnt that Commodore Collier, in the Sybille, with the Esk and Primrose, had been in the bay, and left it only on the preceding day.  We also heard of the decease of Captain Clapperton, Richard Lander, who was the bearer of the melancholy tidings, being on board the Esk, for a passage to England.  Received some letters and papers from England, that had been left for me by my old friend Captain Griffenhooffe, of the Primrose, and whom I was unfortunately doomed never to meet again in this sublunary scene; for having suffered from fever, he was invalided, and died at Ascension, on his way home.  We found the Diadem transport here, which had arrived a few days before, with government stores from Cape Coast Castle.  A remarkable occurrence took place between the agent (Lieutenant Woodman) and the natives, on their first interview.  That gentleman had, like Captain Owen, and some of his officers, allowed his beard to grow from the time he had left England, having been induced to do so for the sake of the advantages, which, from experience.  Captain Owen considered were to be derived from it.  In the first place, all the Arabs wear long beards, and they are held in much respect wherever they sojourn among the various African nations:  not altogether for their beards, but from their intelligence; however, the beard is naturally identified with their character.  They also command respect, because they are generally worn by the old men of their own country, and, on our first arrival, the chiefs of Fernando Po advanced with delight to rub beards, with all those among us who wore them.  When Lieutenant Woodman left the island for Cape Coast, his beard was of considerable length, but meeting with Commodore Collier at Accra, that officer would not receive him in his Fernando Po costume; and being unequal to contend with the higher powers, yielded to the alternative of removing his beard, in preference to subjecting himself to the consequences of his superior officer’s displeasure.  But, mark the effect!—­when he came back to Fernando Po, the native chiefs turned from him with contempt, believing that he could not have lost so dignified an appendage, without having committed some crime.  This reminds me of a passage in the 15th chapter of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, viz.  “The practice of shaving the beard excited the pious indignation of the Fathers of the Church, which practice (according to Tertullian) is a lie against our own faces, and an impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator.”

I was sorry to learn, that there had been some altercation between Commodore Collier, and Captain Owen, on the subject of wearing beards.