The Dahoman force employed in this expedition consisted of some 3,000 Amazons and 5,000 male Dahomans. The Amazons lost very heavily, nearly 1,800 dead women-soldiers being counted by the missionaries of Abbeokuta at the ford and under the walls of the town. The men being little engaged did not suffer much. The Egbas engaged outside the town, both before and after the assault, were estimated at over 20,000, and quite 40,000 persons bore arms during the defence of the fortifications. Very few Dahoman prisoners were taken: the Amazons even when disarmed refused to surrender, fighting on, and biting their foes, and were consequently hacked to pieces. Since this repulse the king of Dahomey has been satisfied with making mere demonstrations of force in the neighbourhood of Abbeokuta, burning the outlying villages and destroying the plantations of plantains and yams, and the fields of corn, without venturing to make any serious attack upon the town itself. The Egbas had several wall-pieces and heavy guns engaged during the assault, and these had done so much execution, badly served as they were, that they at once, through the medium of the missionaries, had a fresh supply of ordnance sent out from England. The missionaries also, who were not at all desirous of seeing their comfortable mission-houses burned and their vocation destroyed, implored the Government to send discharged gunners from West India regiments to Abbeokuta; and there was soon a small body of trained artillerists in readiness for the next assault. The natural features of Dahomey offer a remarkable contrast to those of the Gold Coast. In place of the succession of ridges covered with dense bush and forest, the monotony of which wearies the eye in the latter country, one finds an open park-like country, nearly flat, and with a sandy soil bearing clumps of trees, tall grass, and but very little bush. The banks of streams and the hollows of water-courses are of course densely wooded, and fine timber-trees are common. The country is one specially adapted for agriculture, but only a very small portion of the soil is under cultivation, for the Dahomans, having for years indulged in the exciting and profitable amusement of “slave-hunting,” cannot, now that the slave-trade has been suppressed, fall at once into peaceable pursuits. Palm-oil and ground-nuts are however exported in considerable quantities from Whydah, and, as soon as legitimate commerce is found by the Dahomans to be as paying as the illegitimate bartering of human beings, cotton, sugar, tobacco, and cocoa will in all probability be grown in sufficient quantities for exportation.