[33] Wood is seldom found to be desirable for building in a hot country,
from the numerous ants and other insects that assail it, particularly
where the changes are so frequent from very dry to very moist weather,
if we had had time, it would have been much better to have erected our
buildings with brick or stone. There is, indeed, plenty of fine clay for
the former; but building stones are scarce in that neighbourhood, and we
had not sufficient lime,--as we had to procure burnt lime from Sierra
Leone, or shells from Accra, both of which we obtained for the building
of an armourer's shop and a bakehouse. Indeed, we were obliged to use
the utmost exertion to get any thing erected to shelter the Europeans
and African soldiers, before the rainy season set in. As for the African
mechanics and labourers, they built their own huts, in certain lines,
that we called streets.




CHAP. X.

Slave Canoe--Duke's Pilot--Old Calabar Town--Consternation on Shore,
and disappearance of the Slave Vessels--Fruitless Pursuit of the
Slavers--Eyo Eyo, King Eyo's Brother--Old Calabar Festivals--Attempted
Assassination, and Duke Ephraim's Dilemma--Obesity of the King's
Wives--Ordeal for Regal Honours--Duke's English House--Coasting Voyage
to the Bonny--Author discovers Symptoms of Fever--The Rivers of St.
Nicholas, Sombrero, St. Bartholomew, and Sta. Barbara--"The Smokes"--
Capture of a Spanish Slave Vessel in the River St. John--Nun, or First
Brass River, discovered to be the Niger--Natural Inland Navigation--
New Calabar River--Pilot's Jhu Jhu--Foche Island--Author Sleeps on