“This final decision of the king is a bitter stroke to us, for we fondly indulged the hope of a more favourable issue, from the deliberations of the savage council, at whose dissolution we expected to be sent to the sea coast, without being perplexed with further embarrassments.  We have now to wait the return of a messenger from thence, who has not yet been sent on his errand, and he is to bring back with him the value of twenty slaves, ere we obtain our freedom.  Heaven only knows whether the masters of English vessels at Bonny or Brass, have the ability or feel the disposition to ransom us.  We only know that if disposed of at all, we shall be sold for infinitely more than we are worth.

“As may naturally be supposed, I returned home much depressed and afflicted, to inform my brother of the result of the palaver, and he was as greatly surprised and afflicted as myself at the intelligence.  But though we are full of trouble and uneasiness at our gloomy situation, yet we do not repine at the divine dispensations of that Almighty providence, which has comforted us in the hours of adversity, and relieved us in times of pain and danger, and snatched us from the jaws of death.”

On the following morning, Richard Lander was rather convalescent, and in truth they both wondered much that their health, generally speaking, had been so good, when they reflected for a moment on the hardships and privations, which they had lately undergone, the perplexities in which they had been entangled, and the difficulties with which they had had to contend.

During the few days that they had spent in this place, they had been sadly in want of provisions, and their people, who for the first day bore their privation in silence, have since then been loud in their complaints.  The constant fear which they entertained of being taken away and sold, now, however, changed that lively feeling of discontent into sullen-ness and despondency.  What made the matter still worse was the fact, that having lost their needles and kowries at Kirree, they had not the means of purchasing any thing, although the kowrie shell was not current where they then were.  Obie was in the habit of sending them a fowl, or a yam or two every morning, but as they were ten in number, it made but a slender meal, and it was barely sufficient to keep them from actual starvation.  To stop, if possible, the sullen murmurings of their people, they were now reduced to the painful necessity of begging, but they might as well have addressed their petitions to the stones and trees, and thereby have spared themselves the mortification of a refusal.  They never experienced a more stinging sense of their own humbleness and imbecility than on such occasions, and never had they greater need of patience and lowliness of spirit.  In most African towns and villages, they had been regarded as demi-gods, and treated in consequence with universal kindness, civility, and veneration; but here, alas! what a contrast, they