They received this intelligence with feelings of rapture, and with bursting hearts they offered up thanks to their divine Creator, for his signal preservation of them throughout this disastrous day.

The Kirree people are a savage-looking race; they are amazingly strong and athletic, and are also well proportioned.  Their only clothing is the skin either of a leopard or tiger fastened round their waist.  Their hair is plaited, and plastered with red clay in abundance; and their face is full of incisions in every part of it; these are cut into the flesh, so as to produce deep furrows, each incision being about a quarter of an inch long and dyed with indigo.  It was scarcely possible to make out a feature of their face, and never were individuals more disfigured.  The Eboe women have handsome features; and the Landers could not help thinking it a pity, that such savage-looking fellows as the men should be blessed with so handsome a race of females.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

At sunrise on the 6th November, their canoe was taken from before Kirree market-place, to the little sand bank or island in the middle of the river, where they waited till nine o’clock for the coming of two war canoes, which it was resolved should convoy them to the Eboe country, which they understood was situated three days journey down the Niger.  At seven in the morning they bade adieu to Kirree, the scene of all their sorrows, accompanied by six large war canoes, and again took their station with the Damaggoo people.  Independently of their convoy, they had a sumpter canoe in company, belonging to the Eboe people, from which the others were supplied with dressed provisions.  For their part, they had neither money nor needles, nor indeed any thing to purchase a meal; and knowing this to be the case, their sable guardians neglected to take into consideration the state of their stomachs.  However, they felt no very strong inclination to join them in their repast, though on one occasion they were invited to do so; for they felt an invincible disgust to it, from the filthy manner in which it had been prepared.  Yams were first boiled, and then skinned, and mashed into a paste, with the addition of a little water, by hands that were far from being clean.  As this part of the business requires great personal exertion, the man on whom it devolved perspired very copiously, and the consequences may easily be guessed at.  In eating they use their fingers only, and every one dips his hand into the same dish.

It was ten at night, when they came abreast of a small town, where they stopped.  It was long since they had tasted food, and they had suffered from hunger the whole day, without being able to obtain any thing.  Soon after they had stopped for the night, their guards gave each of them a piece of roasted yam, and their poor famished people had also the good fortune to get some too, being the first they had had since leaving Damaggoo.  The roasted yam, washed down with a little water, was to them as joyful a meal, as if they had been treated with the most sumptuous fare, and they laid themselves down in the canoe to sleep in content.