of Youri and of this country, and say that with a few men they could take them all. Thursday, 23d.—I had heard various stories, at different places on the road, concerning the fate of the late unfortunate and enterprising travellers Park and Martin, none of which I considered worth relating except that which I now heard from the governor’s head man; but they all with whom I have conversed agree in asking me if I am not going to take up the vessel, which they say still remains. The head man’s story is this: that the boat stuck fast between two rocks; that the people in it laid out four anchors a-head; that the water falls down with great rapidity from the rocks, and that the white men, in attempting to get on shore, were drowned; that crowds of people went to look at them, but the white men did not shoot at them as I had heard; that the natives were too much frightened either to shoot at them or to assist them; that there were found a great many things in the boat, books and riches, which the sultan of Boussa has got; that beef cut in slices and salted was in great plenty in the boat; that the people of Boussa who had eaten of it all died, because it was human flesh, and that they knew we white men eat human flesh. I was indebted to the messenger of Yarro for a defence, who told the narrator that I was much more nice in my eating than his countrymen were. But it was with some difficulty I could persuade him that if his story was true, it was the people’s own fears that had killed them; that the meat was good beef or mutton; that I had eaten more goats’ flesh since I had been in this country than ever I had done in my life; that in England we eat nothing but fowls, beef, and mutton. The women here are marked on the body somewhat in the manner of the lace on a hussar’s jacket: in some, where the skin has not healed properly, it looks very disgusting.