men in the country: he assured us, that there was certainly one book at
least saved from Mr. Park's canoe, which is now in the possession of a
very poor man in the service of his master, to whom it had been entrusted
by the late king during his last illness. He said moreover, that if but
one application were made to the king, on any subject whatever, very
little was thought of it; but if a second were made, the matter would be
considered of sufficient importance to demand his whole attention,--such
being the custom of the country. The drummer therefore recommended us to
persevere in our inquiries, for he had no doubt that something to our
satisfaction would be elicited. At his own request, we sent him to the
king immediately, desiring him to repeat our former statement, and to
assure the king, that should he be successful in recovering the book we
wanted, our monarch would reward him handsomely. He desired the drummer to
inform us, that he would use every exertion, and examine the man who was
reported to have the white man's book in his possession, at an early hour
to-morrow. Here the matter at present rests.

* * * * *

"In the afternoon, the king came to see us, followed by a man with a book
under his arm, which was said to have been picked up in the Niger after
the loss of our countryman. It was enveloped in a large cotton cloth, and
our hearts beat high with expectation as the man was slowly unfolding it,
for by its size we guessed it to be Mr. Park's journal; but our
disappointment and chagrin were great, when, on opening the book, we
discovered it to be an old nautical publication of the last century. The
title-page was missing, but its contents were chiefly tables of logarithms.
It was a thick royal quarto, which led us to conjecture that it was a
journal; between the leaves we found a few loose papers of very little
consequence indeed; one of them contained two or three observations on the