Tuesday, 7th.—In the middle of the day the king visited me, and brought a bottle of honey and two cock fowls. He began joking me as to what I was about to give him. I said I had nothing to give him. Says he, “I ask you to give me one of your servants.” “I can’t do that,” says I; “they are free men as well as myself.” “What,” says he, “no slaves in England!” “No,” says I, “as soon as a slave sets his feet in England he is free.” “Then,” says he, “as you must go, either Mr. Houtson or Richard must stop with me. I must have one.” After a good deal of conversation of this kind I asked him to fix a day for our departure. He artfully shifted the subject of conversation to that of women. Would I not like a wife? he would give me one. Did he not give us plenty to eat, or did he not use me well? “All very true, and very good,” says I, “but I am not like a black man, who has no book to write. I must know the day on which I am to go, as I must have all my books ready for the king of England. Every thing I give away is in that book, every thing I get, and every thing I say.” All my talk would not make him fix a day, but he said I should have a servant of his to the king of Youri; that that road was safe. I would go in four days to Yara in Bamba, which was tributary to him; there I would cross the river Moussa, which ran into the Quorra, three days distance; that the Moussa came from the north-west, and in it were plenty of hippopotami. He is still particularly shy of giving any information about the Quorra, of which, perhaps, he has none. At one time he says it runs into the sea between Jaboo and Benin, and at another that it passes Benin; that the Fellatahs are in possession of Raka, only a day’s journey north-north-east, and of all the country between it and the Quorra: he therefore cannot contrive to get me thither. He now shifted the subject of conversation; told me he did not know how many wives, or how many children he had got, but he was sure that his wives alone, hand to hand, would reach from hence to Jannah. He sent for one of his daughters, whom he had given as wife to Abaco, the messenger. His daughters are allowed to take any one they may choose, either as a husband or lover; but it is death to touch any of the king’s wives. The son, at the father’s death, takes all the widows to maintain. The king had his skin rubbed over with the powder of a species of red wood, ground very fine, and made like a paste; it is used by all classes. The wood is brought from Waree and Benin. We gave him a flask of rum on his leaving us, and he promised to give me some of the blue stone of which his beads are made. He says it comes from a country between this and Benin. They are not glass, as I at first supposed. Thursday, 9th.—This evening I had to take the eunuch to task about our provisions: he had been dealing us out too small a share, and pocketing the rest. He pretended to be in a great rage, and even the milk is now bad.