“July 22.--Taken to see the ‘Grand Customs’ at the palace of the late king, at the gate of which two platforms had been erected; on each platform sixteen men and four horses were placed; inside the house was placed another platform, on which were placed sixteen women, four horses, and one alligator. The men and women were all Sierra Leone people captured at Ishagga, and were dressed in European clothes; each group of sixteen men seated, or rather bound, in chairs placed round a table, on which glasses of rum were placed for each. The king then ascended the platform, where he adored the Dahomian fetish, and seemed to make obeisance to the prisoners, whose right arms were then loosed to enable them to take up the glass to drink the king’s health. After the king’s health had been drunk, the effects of the late king were paraded and worshipped by the people as they passed; a grand review of the troops then commenced, and as each marched past the king harangued them, and promised the sack of Abbeokuta in November. Nearly the whole of the troops wore fire-arms; a few select corps had rifles, but the greater part were armed with flint-lock muskets. The artillery consisted of about twenty-four guns (twelve-pounders). The number of troops altogether could scarcely be less than 50,000, including 10,000 amazons, all apparently well disciplined troops. After the review was over the prisoners were beheaded, their heads being hacked off with blunt knives; at the same time the horses and alligator were dispatched, particular care being taken that their blood should mingle with that of the human prisoners. “When all was finished Mr. Euschart was permitted to leave Abomey, which, it is needless to say, he immediately did, having received the magnificent _viatica_ of eight heads of cowries (16_s._), one piece of country cloth, and two flasks of rum. “Mr. Euschart firmly believes that Abbeokuta will, without doubt, be attacked by the whole Dahoman army towards the end of November. “T. L. PERRY, Commander. “To the Governor of Lagos.” It is instructive to turn from this, one of the last reports from this land of human butchery, to another letter written as long ago as November 27, 1724, by one Bullfinch Lamb, a “guest by compulsion” of Trudo Andati, at the time in question King of Dahomey. The epistle appears in “Dahomey and the Dahomans,” and would seem to be the effusion of a gentleman connected with the service of the British Crown, and who had got into a mess, rather through his urgent commercial spirit than through any unavoidable exigence of duty or voluntary adventure. “November 17, 1724.