woman has been known to have had seventy-eight sacrificed, who were all her own property; and to complete the number of eighty, which she, while living, had ordered to be slain on this occasion, two young children, a boy and a girl, whom she had loved exceedingly, were murdered. The dead are commonly buried in their best apparel, and a greater or lesser number of slaves, according to the quality of the deceased, are sacrificed to attend them. The funeral ceremonies usually continue seven or eight days, and consist of lamentations, songs, dancing, and hard drinking; and after a corpse has been interred with all these formalities, it is sometimes taken up, and buried again with a repetition of them, sacrifices included.

The near relations mourn during several months; some with half the head shaved, others with the whole. One day in the year, the great celebrate the decease of their ancestors and relations by a very expensive feast.

When a person of condition dies, the eldest son, who is the sole heir, presents a slave to the king, and another to the three great men, with a petition that he may succeed his father. This is granted. He bestows what he pleases on his younger brothers; allows his mother a creditable maintenance; and employs his father's other wives at his residence.

If a woman be left a widow, she cannot marry again without the consent of her son, if she have a son; or if he be too young, the man who marries her is obliged to give him a female slave, to wait upon him, instead of his mother.

The wealthy among the people of Benin eat beef, mutton, and fowls; and, instead of bread,

yams, boiled, beaten fine, and made into cakes. They give great entertainments to their friends; the common people eat the flesh of cats and dogs.

Their arms are hassagays, pointed arrows, a sort of cutlass, and shields made of small bamboos. They are so cowardly that nothing but necessity can urge them to fight; and when in the field, their conduct is so confused and disorderly, that they themselves are ashamed of it. If their flight be prevented, they turn upon the enemy, not to fight, but to surrender.

All negroes are dancers; but those of Benin are the best.

Theft is rare in Benin. When it is discovered, after restitution of the stolen goods, it is punished by a fine; but if the thief be unable to pay the fine, he is beaten.

Murder is still more rare than theft. It is punished with death by decapitation, and the body is quartered, and exposed to beasts and birds of prey. The latter are held in such estimation, that provisions are regularly laid for them in particular places. If the murderer be a considerable person, he is conducted by a strong guard to the utmost confines of the kingdom, where he is left, and never heard of more.

In a case of murder without premeditation, the offender may ransom his life by burying the dead creditably, at his own expence; paying a large sum to the three great men; and producing a slave to suffer in his place. In this case he kneels, and touches the slave with his forehead, as he is executed.

If an accusation be not clearly proved, the suspected person undergoes an ordeal, to prove his

guilt or innocence. Of this there are four different sorts in common use. In the first, a cock's feather is prepared by the priest, and pierced through the tongue of the accused. If it pass through easily, and be drawn out at the bottom, the man is innocent; if it stick in the tongue he is guilty. In the second, the priest takes an oblong clod of earth, into which, it being less sensible of pain than the tongue, he sticks seven or nine quills of a cock. The suspected person draws these out successively; and if they come out with ease, he is innocent; if with difficulty, he is guilty. In the third, the priest squirts the juice of certain green herbs into the eyes of the accused. If it do not hurt him, he is innocent; if his eyes become inflamed, he is guilty. In the fourth, the priest passes a red hot copper arm-ring three times over the tongue of the supposed culprit; and from his being hurt, or not hurt, by the operation, he is pronounced guilty or innocent.

In the different ordeals of cock's quills and that of the juice of herbs, something seems to be left to the management of the priest; but it appears to me, that red hot copper must infallibly find a man guilty.

Of the fines, a part goes to the injured person; a part to the governor of the town or province; and the rest to the three great men for the king, whom it never reaches. If the three great men be not satisfied with this share, they inform the governor that he has not done his duty, but must send them more; and he knows their authority too well to dispute their opinion.

The people of Benin believe in an invisible deity, who created heaven and earth, and governs

them with absolute power; but they conceive it needless to worship him, because he is always doing good without their services. They also believe in a malignant deity; to whom they sacrifice men and animals, to satiate his thirst of blood, and prevent him from doing them mischief. But they have innumerable objects of worship ;-elephant's teeth, claws, bones, dead men's heads, any trifle that chance throws in their way, to which they make daily offerings of a few boiled yams, mixed with palm oil. On great occasions they sacrifice a cock, treating the divinity with the blood only, and reserving the flesh for themselves. Persons of high rank give an annual feast to their gods, at which multitudes of cattle are offered to the idols and eaten by the people. Each offers his own sacrifices, without giving the priests any sort of trouble.

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CHAPTER XX.

WHYDAH.

ABOUT fifty miles west of Benin lies what was formerly the kingdom of Whydah. No such kingdom now exists; but I shall give some account of it from a Dutch slave-trader who visited this coast between the years 1692 and 1700. This part of the country is called the Slave Coast.

This gentleman begins by stating that slaves were so plentiful in the interior that two were sometimes sold for a handful of salt; and that he himself had laden three ships with this article of merchandize, at Whydah, in fourteen days. He says that the people delivered a thousand slaves a month, and that from twenty-five to fifty ships were laden in a year. The territory did not extend more than ten miles along the coast; but it may be supposed to have been one of the principal marts for human beings *. These creatures came from the inland countries, where there were markets for men, as in Europe for beasts. When a cargo of them arrived at Whydah, they were conducted to prison, from whence they were drawn out into a large open plain, where they were stripped,

* Before the English attempted to abolish the slave trade, it is said that 80,000 slaves were annually exported from Africa. I wish it were possible to know how much the number is now diminished.