Abbeokuta is a walled city, founded in 1825, from the fragments of the tribes of the kingdom of Yoruba, who escaped the invading armies of the Fellatahs, while this powerful people were the principal “slave hunters” for the traders of the western coast of Africa. It contains the remains of 130 towns, and at present embraces a population of nearly 100,000. Badagry, in 1850, contained about 11,000 inhabitants. The Sierra Leone emigrants, at the former city, numbered three thousand, and, at the latter, several hundred. At the period when the emigration commenced, and for several years afterward, the slave-trade prevailed on the coast; and the people of Badagry and Abbeokuta were engaged in supplying the market with slaves. This led them to wage frequent wars, and kept up feelings of hostility throughout the country. In these slave hunts, the people of Lagos bore a conspicuous part. This town is about 36 miles to the eastward of Badagry, is large and populous, and had hitherto been the head-quarters of the slave-trade in the Bight of Benin. The river Ossa, a lagoon, running parallel with the coast, unites these two places. The Episcopal Mission at Sierra Leone, sent an exploring committee to Abbeokuta in 1842, and early in 1845 its first missionaries landed at Badagry. In both instances they found the Wesleyans in advance of them. Being unable to reach Abbeokuta, on account of existing wars, a mission was founded at Badagry. In 1846, a noted slave-dealer of the coast, forced the warring tribes to cease hostilities, that he might collect his slaves from the interior; and the missionaries, embracing this moment of peace, were enabled to reach Abbeokuta. Among the Episcopal Missionaries, was the Rev. Samuel Crowther, a native of Yoruba, who had been captured by the Fellatahs, in 1821, and sold to the traders at Lagos. Shipped on board a slaver for Brazil, recaptured by an English cruizer, educated at Sierra Leone, ordained to the ministry of the Gospel in England, he had now returned, after twenty-five years of sanctified captivity, to proclaim the way of salvation to his relatives and countrymen; and he had the inexpressible gratification of finding his mother and two sisters, soon after his arrival, and of being instrumental in her conversion to Christianity. The chiefs of Abbeokuta received the missionaries with kindness; and, no wonder, as some of them had relatives of their own, sitting by them, who had been liberated by the English.