One day, calling at a town seventy miles from the coast, I found it almost torn down and the people in great distress. They had decided, months before, to move the entire town to the coast, and therefore had not planted their gardens that season. A month previous to my visit the people of the town, with all their goods and chattels, including chickens, goats and sheep, and in some cases even the material of their houses, had been loaded in a fleet of canoes of every size—some so small that a single man sitting in one of them found it necessary to straddle it and let his legs hang in the water, and some large enough for a chief and half a dozen wives and twice as many children, besides a few goats, and a few bunches of plantains and bananas. When they were ready to start a messenger arrived telling them that the people of Alum, a large town thirty miles down the river, were lying in wait for them, intending to kill some of them or take them prisoners. These two towns had been friendly of late; but the people down the river, knowing that the up-river people with their families and possessions would be at an extreme disadvantage, knowing also that they could not long delay their journey because of their limited supply of food, bethought them of some old score resulting from a former war, and resolved to lie in wait and take several prisoners in the hope of extorting a ransom. So they kept men watching day and night on the river. The unfortunate people of the upper town proved their resourcefulness by proposing to me that I should tow the whole town down the river behind the _Dorothy_—and do it at night. I, for some reason, was fascinated with the idea, and it took only twelve chickens to persuade me. Taking the entire town in tow, I started down the river about nine o’clock at night. Shortly after midnight I realized that we were approaching the enemy because of the extraordinary silence of those in the canoes, who hitherto had maintained a deafening noise, but now were hushed, having put out their torches, and were lying down flat in their canoes for safety. The enemy was on the watch; many canoes were on the river. It was pitch dark, not a single light or sign of life visible. The _Dorothy_ as she suddenly burst upon their sight with all her lights, and going full speed, must have looked very formidable to people who had never seen anything of the kind, for she had not before passed at night. They may have supposed that a whole battalion of spirits of all kinds and colours were coming against them. The effect was an immediate panic. Calling loudly to each other and to their ancestors they hastened to the bank. It was only after we had passed that they discovered the canoes in tow and suspected that their enemies had outwitted them. I visited the town soon afterwards for the purpose of laughing at them. And they laughed with me; laughed as only Africans can laugh.