The town of Catanoo was acquired in January, 1880. It lies on the sea-board, immediately opposite the independent kingdom of Porto Novo, on the northern bank of the lagoon of the same name. The king of that state was formerly a source of tribulation to the revenue officers of Lagos; as, when Catanoo was independent, he could there land exciseable articles free of duty, which were afterwards smuggled with wonderful facility into British territory by lagoon. In addition to this, he and his subjects were continually interfering with and molesting the peaceable Mohammedan traders; so the inhabitants of Catanoo were persuaded to hoist the British flag, and now the Porto Novo potentate has to proceed as far west as Whydah to import his rum if he wishes to avoid paying customs dues. CHAPTER VI. Leeches--Ikorudu--A Blue-blood Negro--Badagry--Flying Foxes--Fetishes--A Smuggler entrapped--Floating Islands--Porto Novo--Thirsty Gods--Cruel Kindness. While at Lagos I heard that there was one of those fortified Mohammedan towns, peculiar to the interior of Western Africa, some eighteen miles to the north-east of the island. I had never seen one of these towns, so I hired a boat and a guide, and started early one morning for this particular one, which was named Ikorudu. We paddled along the lagoon for some distance, until we had passed the mouth of the river Ogu, and then the canoe-men ran the canoe into the mud of a mangrove swamp, and the guide said I was to disembark. I remarked that I did not see any path, and that if I had known that I should have to wade about in liquid mud I would have brought some stilts, but he said the road was better after a little distance, so I got on the shoulders of one of the men and waded ashore. We walked on along a track three or four inches deep with sticky mud, through an immense swamp. Far away into the gloomy shadows of the bush stretched shallow pools of muddy water, in which the hideous mangrove stretched out its distorted limbs, while the mangrove fish leaped off the roots of the trees and skipped away across the surface of the water at our approach. Suddenly my foot slipped from under me, and I slid along for some distance, only to be brought up violently against a mangrove stump. I rubbed my knee, and anathematised the mud _sotto voce_. I had hardly moved two paces further when the ground seemed to be cut away from under my feet, and I fell into the arms of my guide. He said-- “You will have to be careful where you tread here.” I replied:--“So it seems.” “Yes, there are a lot of them about this morning.”