“For equal right in equal things doth stand.”

Moreover, here, as in the Shetlands of the early nineteenth century, when the keel touches bottom the seaman loses his rights, and she belongs to the shore.

Tom Peter offered to show us other relics of the past if we would give him two days.  A little party was soon made up, Mr. J. C. Bigley, the master, and Mr. Richards, the excellent gunner of the “Griffon,” were my companions.  We set out in a south-by-easterly direction to the bottom of Sonho, or Diogo’s Bay, which Barbot calls “Bay of Pampus Rock.”  Thence we entered Alligator River, a broad lagoon, the Raphael Creek of Maxwell’s map, not named in the hydrographic chart of 1859.  Leading south with many a bend, it is black water and thick, fetid mud, garnished with scrubby mangrove, where Kru-boys come to cut fuel and catch fever; here the dew seemed to fall in cold drops.  After nine miles we reached a shallow fork, one tine of which, according to our informants, comes from the Congo Grande, or Sao Salvador, distant a week’s march.  Leaving the whaler in charge of a Kru-man, we landed, and walked about half a mile over loose sand bound by pine-apple root, to the Banza Sonho, or, as we call it, King Antonio’s Town--not to be mistaken for that placed in the charts behind Point Padron.  Our object being unknown, there was fearful excitement in the thatched huts scattered under the palm grove, till Tom Peter introduced us, and cleared for us a decent hut.  The buildings, if they can be so called, are poor and ragged, copies of those which we shall see upon the uplands.  Presently we were visited by the king named after that saint “of whom the Evil One was parlous afraid.”  This descendant of the “Counts of Sonho,” in his dirty night-cap and long coat of stained red cloth, was a curious contrast to the former splendour of the “count’s habit,” with cap of stitched silk which could be worn only by him and his nobles, fine linen shirt, flowered silk cloak, and yellow stockings of the same material.  When King Affonso iii. gave audience to the missioners (A.D. 1646), the negro grandee “had on a vest of cloth set with precious stones, and in his hat a crown of diamonds, besides other stones of great value.  He sat on a chair under a canopy of rich crimson velvet, with gilt nails, after the manner of Europe; and under his feet was a great carpet, with two stools of the same colour, and silk laced with gold.”  After the usual palaver we gave the black earl a cloth and bottle of rum for leave to pass on, but no one would accompany us that evening, all pretending that they wanted time to fit up the hammocks.  At night a body of armed bushmen marched down to inspect us.