pending presidential election, convincing them that the long-predicted
and wished-for day--the breaking up of the Republic--was nigh at hand,
and their real feelings as Englishmen cropped out but too plainly; but
of this, more anon.

Despite the perils of the surf, the dangers of the inhospitable climate,
and the unfriendly character of some of the savage tribes to be met
with, the adventurous spirit and dauntless courage of Master Perkins was
not to be balked. Volunteering for every duty, no matter how dangerous,
hardly a boat ever left the ship that he was not in it. The life of the
mess through his unfailing good humor and exuberant flow of spirits, he
was the soul of every expedition, whether of service or pleasure; and
before the cruise of some twenty-two months was up, he came to know
almost every prominent tribe, chief, and king on the coast. Now dining
with a king off the strangest of viands; now holding "palaver" with
another; now spending a day with a chief and his numerous wives; now
visiting a French barracoon, where, under a fiction of law, the victims
were collected to be shipped as unwilling apprentices, not slaves, to be
returned to their native wilds, _if they lived long enough_; now
ascending a river dangerous for boats, where, if the boat had capsized,
himself and crew would but have served a morning's meal to the hungry
sharks held as fetich by the natives along the stream, who yearly
sacrifice young girls reared for the purpose to their propitiation; now
scouring the bush in pursuit of the gorilla or shooting hippopotami by
the half-dozen, and other adventures and exploits wherein duty,
excitement, and gratified curiosity were intermingled with danger and
hairbreadth escape that few would care to tempt.

On one occasion, he volunteered to go with a boat's crew and find the
mouth of the Settee River, not dreaming of landing through the unusually