After Widah our cruise took on a different aspect.  We had come to that part of the coast called the Bights, consisting of the Gulfs of Biafra and Benin, between which lies the huge Niger Delta.  The weather, which continued as scorching as ever, became excessively oppressive.  The sky was always dark and the rain never ceased.  Sometimes a rift was seen in the clouds in the distance, it would rapidly increase in size, taking a funnel shape, and then a tornado would burst, like a tempest in miniature, lasting only three or four hours, but of extraordinary violence.  During one of these the Belle-Poule had to scud along under bare poles at the rate of twelve knots an hour.  The weather was excessively unhealthy, but in the whole course of this long cruise I never lost but one man, who was carried off by a violent inflammation of the liver.  I attribute this good fortune in the first place to the undoubted cleverness of our surgeon-major, Dr. Loze, whose whole career had been spent in tropical waters.  His theory was that quinine was only absolutely efficacious if administered at a very fleeting moment in the course of the fever, between the hot and cold fits, and he always sat up with his patients himself, so as to catch the favourable opportunity.  In the second place we took quite exceptional hygienic precautions, especially against the night damp.  The crew wore their winter kit from sunset to sunrise.  No man was allowed to lie down on deck during the night watches, especially while the dew was falling.  They had to walk up and down the whole time, under an awning, which was always kept up over the deck.  In order to carry this out, we never had more than half watches on duty at night.  We had to navigate carefully and slowly, being short of hands, but the result was well worth the temporary departure from the usual regulations for life on board a ship of war.

I went up one of the arms by which the Niger pours it waters into the Gulf of Guinea on board the Fine, a schooner belonging to the station, commanded by Captain Lahalle.  This arm, known as the Bonny River, is the trading branch, the one down which passes all the produce which the mighty Niger—­a completely navigable river, with neither cataracts nor rapids, the great future artery of Equatorial Africa—­brings from the interior of the continent.  A negro king of the name of Pepel, more intelligent than his fellows, had constituted himself broker to this important trade.  The European merchantmen coming up the river anchored before his town, made over their cargoes to him, and shipped palm-oil, the chief riches of the country, in their stead.  The drawback was that anything you do with negroes is slow work.  Whether it was that the palm-oil, which came in canoes, and very irregularly, from high up the river, did not arrive in sufficient quantities, or whether it was deliberate delay on Pepel’s part, a year would sometimes elapse before the return cargo was completed, and sickness was meanwhile decimating