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that 5,000 well armed negroes of the Gold Coast would have put them to flight. Their fear of death was such that most of them began to retreat before the enemy appeared; and it often happened that the general reached home before the soldiers. They did, however, shew rather more bravery in defending their own country than in attacking that of their neighbour. Their arms were muskets, bows and arrows, fine and well-made hangers, and strong and beautiful hassagays. The people of Whydah and Ardra had also a sort of club of very heavy wood, about a yard in length, and five or six inches in circumference, very round and even, except a knot at the bottom, about four inches in breadth. This was a deadly weapon, and every man was provided with five or six of these, which he threw against his opponent.

The king of Great Ardra, a country bordering upon Whydah, and farther inland, was said, with his dependent governments, to have been twenty times stronger than the king of Whydah; and farther still inland were yet more powerful monarchs. While the Dutchman was in this part of Africa, an ambassador came from one of these to the King of Great Ardra, informing him that many subjects of Ardra had been complaining to his master of the ill treatment they had suffered from their viceroys; and counselling the king to order his viceroys to treat his poor subjects with greater lenity; otherwise this powerful sovereign would be obliged, though very reluctantly, to come to the assistance of the men of Ardra, and take them under his own protection.

The king of Ardra's answer to this remonstrance was the murder of the ambassador.

The powerful king sent an army of cavalry, the Ardrese said a million of men, but possibly their account of millions might not be very exact, against the king of Ardra. They quickly subdued half the country; and such was the slaughter they made, that the men of Ardra expressed the number by the grains of corn in the field. Each invader carried home with him indubitable tokens of the number of men he had slain; and no one dared to take with him a prisoner, unless those he had killed amounted to a hundred. When the victorious army reached home, the sovereign ordered the commander to be hanged; not because he had not slain a sufficient number of innocent men, but because he had not destroyed the royal murderer of his ambassador.

Here ends the Dutch merchant's account of Whydah. Whydah, once a flourishing and independent kingdom, is now a province of the empire of Dahomy. The king of Hio was probably the powerful sovereign whose general had invaded Ardra, and was hanged because he did not kill the king.

It is criminal in the natives of Dahomy to converse upon politics; and even the old soldier dares not shew his scars, or talk of his exploits; yet with great assiduity I have collected some facts relating to this country which will introduce the monarch to my reader before I visit him.

335

CHAPTER XXI.

ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF DAHOMY.

THE Dahomans were formerly called Foys, and they inhabited a small territory on the north-east part of their present kingdom. Early in the seventeenth century, Tacoodonoo, their chief, murdered a neighbouring prince who was with him on a friendly visit, seized upon Calmina, his principal town, and soon after made himself master of his kingdom. He then invaded a more powerful state, and laid siege to Abomey, its capital; and as he met with some resistance, he made a solemn vow, that if he proved successful he would sacrifice its prince to his fetish. The town was reduced; the prince was captured, his belly was ripped open, and the wall of a new palace for the conqueror was carried over his body. This palace, when finished, was called Dahomy, or Da's belly; Da being the name of the prince, and homy, in the language of these people, signifying the belly. Tacoodonoo fixed his residence here, and assumed the title of king of Dahomy, and his subjects changed the appellation of Foys for that of Dahomans. This happened about the year, 1625.

About the year 1724, Guaja Trudo, the fourth king of Dahomy, conquered the kingdom of Ardra. Trudo had abundance of plate, wrought gold, and other sumptuous articles; but while he boasted of wealth and conquest, he was himself in fear of a sovereign still more powerful, the king of Hio,

whose dominions lie, as it is said, about a hundred and fifty, or two hundred leagues to the north-east of Abomey; and after the first invasion of the Hioes, Trudo thought proper to purchase their forbearance by considerable presents.

In the year 1727 Trudo conquered Whydah. A few weeks after, he was visited in his camp at Ardra by the captain of an English vessel, who gives the following account of his expedition.

In travelling from Jaquin to Ardra, a distance of about forty miles, the captain and his companions found the roads good; the country beautiful; the towns and villages destroyed; and the. fields strewn with human bones. When they ar rived within half a mile of the Dahoman camp, they were met by one of the principal officers, attended by five hundred soldiers with muskets, drawn swords, shields, and banners. The commander and several of his officers, approached the travellers with ceremonies which they did not view wholly without apprehension; flourishing their naked swords over the heads of the strangers, pointing them to their breasts, skipping and jumping round them with many extraordinary gestures. The officer then assumed a grave air; and after he had drank their healths, and they had returned the compliment by drinking the health of the king, he conducted them to the camp.

The camp was situated near the ruined town of Ardra, which was said to have been nine miles in circumference, including its gardens and shady walks. The soldiers were in huts like bee-hives, constructed with small boughs, and covered with thatch, each large enough to contain ten or twelve men, who crept in at a hole on one side.

The strangers had chairs that had been taken from the Whydahs, placed for them under the shade of Multitudes of people flocked to see them; but they were kept from intruding by the soldiers.

some trees.

The travellers dined on ham and fowls, which they had brought with them; but they were so annoyed by flies that they could scarcely put a morsel into their mouths, without taking some of these troublesome insects with it. Had they

known from whence they proceeded, horror would have taken place of disgust; for, on their being conducted to the king, they passed two heaps of human heads, piled on two large stages, and covered with swarms of their late visitors. These, they were told, were the heads of four thousand of the Whydahs, who had been sacrificed to celebrate the late victory.

The king's gate opened into a large court, inclosed with palisades. In this, Trudo was seen, sitting on a fine gilt chair, taken from the king of Whydah. Three large umbrellas were held over his head by as many women, and four women stood behind him, with muskets on their shoulders. All were richly dressed from the waist downwards; the upper part of the body being uncovered. Their arms were adorned with many large bracelets of gold; and round their necks, and in their hair they wore abundance of beads *, of various colours, brought from a country far inland, where they were dug out of the earth. These were as highly valued by the negroes as diamonds are by Europeans. The king wore a gown flowered with

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