The look-outs were stimulated to increased vigilance, by the offer of a reward of five pounds to the one who should first discover the schooner; but they made land a little to the northward of the Ambriz River, without being able to see her. Determined to intercept the slaver as she returned, the two vessels separated, the sloop sailing to the northward, and the brig to the southward, intending to cruise up and down the coast until the schooner sailed. Willis, in the meantime, had safely completed his passage, and when his pursuers made the land, was at anchor twenty miles up a river that makes into the ocean, a degree to the south’ard of St. Felipe de Benguela, busily engaged in taking aboard his cargo of four hundred negroes, that had been waiting at the Factory for him. It would have afforded much food for a reflective mind, that African scene. At the first glance, all was beautiful; the bright and placid river gently rippling through the mangrove-bushes and tree-limbs, that overhung until they touched its surface; the tall and luxurious forest-trees that lined its banks, with an under-growth of flowering shrubs, and gay creeping vines, hanging from bough to bough in fantastical festoons, the branches alive with chattering monkeys, and lively, noisy parrots, and birds whose brilliant plumage, as they flew from perch to perch in the strong light, resembled gold and jewels; the graceful and fairy-like schooner, with the small boats going and returning; and the long, low factory, with its palm roof, just seen through the leaves on the summit of a hill, a little back from the stream, was beautiful—very beautiful. But on a closer examination, in that bright river were to be seen myriads of hideous, greedy alligators. The luxurious trees afforded refuge for legions of troublesome insects, and noxious reptiles; in the flowering under-growth lurked deadly and venomous serpents; and most of the gay creeping plants were poisonous; the fairy-looking schooner was discovered to be a sink of moral infamy: the small boats were ladened with miserable captives; and even the partly seen Factory was a den of sin and suffering. The natural and the artificial harmonized well—both charming, lovely, enticing, but equally corrupt, dangerous, and unwholesome. In eight days the slaver’s living freight was all received on board. The day before, Willis had dispatched Mateo in a small boat to the mouth of the river, for the purpose of seeing if the coast was clear, and that no men-of-war were in sight; for nearly all the slavers that are captured, are caught just as they make out from the rivers, and before they have sea-room enough to enable them to use to advantage their superior sailing qualities.