12th.—Crossed the river at nine o’clock this morning, the water reaching to our chins; and immediately proceeded towards Cuttup, where we arrived after three hours’ travelling. Having heard, on my route, so many different reports of Cuttup, its wealth, population, and celebrated market, I was rather surprised on finding it to consist of nearly five hundred small villages, almost adjoining each other; nearly the whole of which occupy a vast and beautiful plain, adorned with the finest trees. Here, for the first time since leaving the coast, I saw plantain, palm, and cocoa-nut trees, in great abundance, and in a flourishing condition; the country resembling, in a striking manner, some parts of Yariba. A considerable traffic is carried on here in slaves and bullocks; the latter are bred by Fellatas, a great number of whom reside here for no other purpose. Slaves, as well as bullocks and sheep, are exposed in the market, which is held daily; and also red cloth, gum, salt, goora nuts, trona, beads, tobacco, country cloth, rings, needles, cutlery articles, and honey, rice, milk, &c. People from the most distant parts of the country resort here in vast numbers, to purchase these various articles. The sultan being a very great man, I thought it necessary to make him a present worthy the representative (however humble) of the king of England. I accordingly gave him four yards of blue damask, the same quantity of scarlet ditto, a print of my own gracious sovereign, and one of his royal highness the Duke of York, with several more trifling articles. In return, I received from him a sheep, the humps of two bullocks, and stewed rice sufficient for fifty men. Ten of the king’s wives, on paying me a visit a day or two after my arrival, took a fancy to the gilt buttons on my jacket, which I cut off and presented to their sable majesties. Thinking them to be gold, they immediately stuck them in their ears. In this belief I took care not to undeceive them. During my stay at Cuttup I was never in want of a bullock’s hump (by far the best part of the animal, weighing from twelve to fifteen pounds), for the king invariably receives, as a tax from the butchers, the hump of every bullock they slaughtered; and one or two was sent me by his wives each day. Being in want of money, I sent to the market and informed the people I had needles and beads to sell; on which several buyers came into my hut and purchased freely, giving me fifteen or twenty cowries each for the needles, whilst the Arabs could only get ten at most for theirs; but whether they conceived my needles to be superior, or whether it was the desire of obtaining something of a white man, I did not learn. Unlike the princes of Houssa, Borgoo, Nyffé, Cuttumkora, and other places in the interior, the sultan of Cuttup gives his wives unrestricted liberty.