With respect to this little track, it had a depth, at the commencement, of two, immediately afterwards of two and a half, and, at the end of our excursion, of three and a quarter fathoms. We returned about evening by land,—painful enough for Sabatier and myself, who are just convalescent,—and passed by nine small villages, or groups of tokuls, which I had taken, at our anchorage, for three villages, and then had counted thirteen. The surface of the earth is an excellent humus on this side, and the little fields were trenched with furrows for irrigation, and on which, among other things, we found water-melons. On the extensive plain of the island we do not observe a tree, except some small ones, near our vessels, and a large one behind the city of Buko. From a distance we saw the natives harpooning fish, which they brought soon for sale to us. But here, also, we found, in general, an intolerable and abominable mistrust. _3rd February._—The natives have generally few ornaments, weapons, and other effects; and little, therefore, could I acquire in this respect. Yet I did a good business in ivory, and I please myself at the idea of how you, my dear brother, will stare, though far,—far are we yet asunder. An old man, having two thick ivory rings, of a hand’s breadth, on the upper part of each arm, and leathern strings round his neck, will have nothing to do with selling or the new glass trade. He regards the glass beads with a certain air of contempt,—won’t have them, even gratis, and looks disdainfully at the childish passion of his nation. I see him now from the vessel, quietly sitting under a little tree, and smoking his pipe, without troubling himself to come nearer to us. He smoked, as is frequently seen on the White Stream, _charcoal_, from want of tobacco—called here also tabak—a thing which none of us could imitate. When I gave him tobacco, he became at once quite friendly, knocked the charcoal out of his pipe, filled it, took down the little tongs, to which there was a shovel attached, from the pipe-tube, and laid a coal upon it. Unfortunately, what we had been already told in Bari about the traffic in slaves, was confirmed here. Las Casas,[6] who effected the freedom of the Indians, transplanted therefore an abuse only from one quarter of the globe to the other, without considering its results. In the mutual wars here, the prisoners, like those of the Greeks, Romans, and ancient Germans, are made slaves. Yet, perhaps, among these people they are redeemed by paying a certain number of cattle. Men-hunts, properly speaking, do not seem to take place, and their wars consist only in the reciprocal plunder of herds, and the revenge thereby occasioned, when they may seize on human beings as an equivalent for their pillaged property.