The church service was read this morning agreeably to their general custom. The natives, of whose society they were never able to rid themselves, seemed to attach great awe and reverence to their form of worship, for they had made them understand what if they were going about, which induced them to pay a high degree of silent attention to the ceremony, and set at rest for the time, that peculiar continuous laugh by which they are distinguished from their neighbours. In the afternoon, or as the natives express it, when the sun had lost its strength, they departed from the town of Bidjie, accompanied by its good natured, happy governor, and in a very few minutes afterwards reached the banks of a rivulet called Yow. Butterflies were here more numerous than could be imagined, millions of them fluttered around them, and literally hid from their sight every thing but their own variegated and beautiful wings.
Here on the banks of the Yow they took a last farewell of the affectionate old chief, who implored the “Great God,” to bless them, and as the canoes in which they had embarked moved from the spot, a loud long laugh, with clapping of hands from the lower classes, evinced the satisfaction they felt at having seen the white men, and their hearty wishes for their welfare.
The Yow is an extremely narrow rivulet, not more than a few feet in breadth, and flows in a serpentine direction through a flat country, covered with rushes, and tall, rank grass. Crocodiles are said to resort here in great numbers, indeed the low bark or growl of these rapacious animals was heard distinctly, and in some instances quite close to them; after they had been pushed along against the stream by poles for five or six miles, between four and five o’clock in the afternoon they landed at a narrow creek, which ran a little way into a thick and gloomy forest. They had not proceeded more than two hundred yards on the pathway, when they were met by a messenger from Jenna, who informed them that the owners of all the horses in the town, had ridden out to welcome their chief, and escort him to his residence, so that they should be obliged to walk the remainder of the way. A few minutes, however, only had elapsed before they descried a horse approaching them in the path, this was a goodly sight to them, who were already becoming wearied and sore with the exertions they had made during the day, for they did not reflect a moment that the animal might not after all be for their use. However, they soon met, and the rider immediately declared that he had left Jenna purposely on their account. The head of the horse was loaded with charms and fetishes, enveloped in pieces of red and blue cloth. His saddle was of Houssa manufacture, and uncommonly neat; in the interior such an article is only used by the principal people, and his bridle also was of curious workmanship. The horseman had an extravagant idea of his own consequence, and seemed to be a prodigious