It was a matter of Kroo orthodoxy, that into this pond the great ancestor and author of their race had descended from heaven, and there first made his appearance as a man. Hence it was the faith of their established church to make offerings to the pond in favor of the fish that dwelt there. Now it was also an old and ever-to-be-respected law among them, that no fish should be boiled with the scales on. Amid their career of victory, the audacious and criminal fact was one day discovered, that into the sacred pond, the just object of reverence to an enlightened and religious people, there had been thrown a quantity of fish boiled in a mode which indicated contempt for every thing praiseworthy and national, inasmuch as not a scale had been scraped off previously to their being boiled. The nation got into a ferment about the fish-scales. From arguments they went to clubs and spears. Parties accusing and parties accused defended their lives, in “just and necessary wars,” while the Folgias looked on until both were weak enough to be conquered. The victors, however, were generous. Their chief married the sister of Flonikerri, the leader of the Kroos, and left him in sovereignty over his people. Flonikerri showed his loyalty by resisting an attack on the Folgias by the Quabo of the southeast. In the mean time the great sovereign Mendino, king of the Monoos, had died; and as negro chiefs are or ought to be immortal, and as no king can die except by sorcery, his brother Manomassa was accused as having contrived his death. He drank the sassy-wood, and survived, without satisfying the people. As the sorcerers proposed to hold a kind of court of inquiry upon the case, Manomassa, indignant at the charge, surrendered himself to the care of the “spirits of the dead,” and went away among the Gala. There his character gained him the office of chief. But annoyed at their subsequent caprice, he threw himself upon the generosity of the Folgias, who employed Flonikerri to reinstate him in his dominion over the Gala. Flonikerri had in fact become a kind of generalissimo of the united tribes. He was afterwards employed in subduing the Veys of Cape Mount; and after various battles, reduced them to offer proof of their submission. This consisted in each swallowing some drops of blood from a great number of chickens, which were afterwards boiled; they ate the flesh, reserving the legs, which were delivered to the conqueror, to be preserved as a memorial of their fealty. Flonikerri fell in battle, resisting a revolt of the Galas. Being hard pressed, he drew a circle round him on the ground, vowing that within it he would resist or die. Kneeling there he expired under showers of arrows.