injured. We managed to get the boat in the river, but suffered awfully
from thirst. The next morning we lost our way, and, after pulling around
till mid-afternoon, we stumbled on some natives fishing. We followed
them home, but found them such a miserable, bad-looking lot of negroes
that we expected trouble. Knowing that the native villages in the
daytime are left in charge of the old men and women, and not knowing
what might happen when the men came back, we killed some chickens, and,
with some sweet potatoes, made quite a meal. The strongest of us, myself
and three others, got ready for a fight, while the rest manned the boat
ready for our retreat. Shortly after this the chief came back, and about
a hundred men with him. I told the chief I had come to pay him a visit,
and we had a great palaver; but he would not give us anything to eat,
and we made up our minds that it was a dangerous neighborhood; so we
moved down on a sand-spit in sight of the ship, and there we stayed
three days and nights. We built a tent and fortification, traded off
most of our clothes for something to eat, and slept unpleasantly near
several hundred yelling savages. All this while the ship could render no
assistance; but on the third day the Kroomen came on shore with some
oars, and, after trying all one day, we managed, just at night, to get
through the surf and back to the ship. It was a happy time for us, and I
may say for all on board, as they had been very anxious about us. Not
far north of this, if you happen to get cast ashore, they kill and eat
you at once, for cannibalism is by no means extinct among the negroes."

The sequel of this perilous experience was that all of them were
stricken down with the dread African fever which, if it does not at all
times kill, but too often shatters the constitution beyond remedy; and
the fact that five officers, including one commanding officer, and a
proportionate number of men, had been invalided home, and another
commanding officer had died, all due to climatic causes, attests the