It is a redeeming trait of the native character, so far as it goes, that women are not wholly without influence in the public councils. If, when a tribe is debating the expediency of going to war, the women come beneath the council-tree, and represent the evils that will result, their opinion will have great weight, and may probably turn the scale in favor of peace. On the other hand, if the women express a wish that they were men, in order that they might go to war, the warriors declare for it at once. It is to be feared, that there is an innate fierceness even in the gentler sex, which makes them as likely to give their voices for war as for peace. It is a feminine office and privilege, on the African coast, to torture prisoners taken in war, by sticking thorns in their flesh, and in various other modes, before they are put to death. The unfortunate Captain Farwell underwent three hours of torture, at the hands of the women and children. So, likewise, did the mate of Captain Burke's vessel, at Sinoe. The natives are very cruel in their fights, and spare neither age nor sex; they kill the women and female children, lest they should be the mothers of future warriors, and the boys, lest they should fight hereafter. If they take prisoners, it is either to torture them to death, or to sell them as slaves. The Fishmen have often evinced courage and obstinacy in war, as was the case in their assaults upon the Liberian settlers, in the heroic age of the colony, when Ashman and his associates displayed such warlike ability in defeating them. The Bushmen are as cruel as the former, but appear to be more cowardly. I have heard the Rev. Mr. Brown, himself an actor in the scene, relate the story of the fight at Heddington, in which three colonists, assisted by two women, were attacked at daybreak by five hundred natives, many of whom were armed with muskets. Zion Harris and Mr. Demery were the marksmen, while the clergyman assumed the duty of loading the guns. The natives rushed onward in so dense a crowd, that almost every bullet and buckshot of the defenders hit its man. The besieged had but six muskets, one hundred cartridges, and a few charges of powder. Their external fortifications consisted only of a slight picket-fence, which might have been thrown down in an instant. But, fortunately, when there were but three charges of powder left in the house, a shot killed Gotorap, the chief of the assailants, at whose fall the whole army fled in dismay. One of the trophies of their defeat was the kettle which they had brought for the purpose of cooking the missionaries, and holding a cannibal feast. The battle-field is poetically termed the bed of honor: but the bravest man might be excused for shrinking from a burial in his enemy's stomach! Poetry can make nothing of such a fate.