A hundred miles west of the forts of Accra we found ourselves opposite Widah, the chief mart of the kingdom of Dahomey.  From the sea we looked on a sort of sandy dyke, on which the waves broke furiously.  Behind the dyke lay a wide lagoon, some of it a mere marsh, and beyond the lagoon the flags of France, Spain, and Brazil floated over some forts and large white European houses.  It was the first time we had seen our flag waving on any spot on the coast since leaving Senegal, and we were very eager to go and see the station it sheltered.  Landing was no easy matter, and I waited a long time in a big canoe, manned by twenty paddlers kneeling forward, before the old negro in the stern decided the attempt to be possible.  He never stopped invoking every fetish under the sun, and sprinkling the sea out of a brandy bottle, keeping his eye the while on the waves as they came rolling in.  Then all at once he gave a great shout, loudly responded to by the twenty paddlers, who yelled in cadence, while the canoe flew before the united and frenzied strokes of their paddles.  Two enormous waves passed, leaving us undamaged; but a third approached, huge and threatening.  Should we get to the shore before it?  Would it rise upright and capsize us, or would it break on us and swamp us?  Neither.  It did reach us, indeed, but the old steersman had calculated well; it lifted us up unharmed and carried us on to the beach, where a hundred negroes laid hold of the canoe and dragged it high and dry.  I was seized myself before I had time to collect my ideas, and put into a hammock hung upon a long pole, which five or six tall negroes held horizontally, with arms outstretched above their heads, during the time it took to cross the lagoon, where the water was waist high.  They set me down at last, at the gate of the French fort, in the middle of an immense crowd, much excited at the arrival of a French squadron—­there were three ships.

Widah had been, and still was, a very important slave station.  France, England, and Portugal had in former days possessed forts there, and had successively abandoned them.  The Portuguese, Spanish, and Brazilian factories alone remained in possession of the trade in that country.  They sold European goods to the King of Dahomey, taking slaves, of whom they had formerly exported large numbers, in exchange, and this was a source of great riches.  But at the time I speak of, with the British cruisers about, hardly one slaver got through out of every ten.  The King of Dahomey had a glut of slaves on his hands, and cleared them off by massacring them as human sacrifices at idol feasts.  One Frenchman, M. Provencal, of the firm of Regis, at Marseilles, had lately rehoisted the national colours at the French fort, rebuilt the dwellings, and set to work to do legitimate trade, offering his goods to the King of Dahomey, and taking nothing in exchange but palm-oil and similar produce.  If the slave trade is put down—­and when I was on that coast its days seemed already numbered—­that enterprising and plucky Frenchman will have done more to civilise those countries than all the more violent measures have accomplished.  I was very glad to notice his action, and gave him the heartiest encouragement to persevere in it.  The courtyard of the station was already full of casks of palm-oil, which augured well.