After stopping five minutes and drinking water with the headman, we marched from Azoway, the country resembling a gentleman’s park in England; rising ground three miles to the eastward, road bearing N. two miles, then N. W. seven miles, reached Aladda, a town with a good market and king’s house built for the accommodation of white men visiting Dahomey. Near this place I shot a monkey and gave it to my carriers, who considered it a great luxury. I ate a piece of his liver, which was very good. The King keeps wives at this place, the head one of whom sent me water and a present of a fowl. The land is level, with good soil, and plenty of corn; distant seven miles and three quarters from Azoway, and from Torree fifteen miles and a quarter. On the road I had hired some assistant carriers, and my people were now in better marching order, and all seemed comfortable and myself happy. In the house where I slept I found a sheet of paper written in Arabic, and suspended to one of the beams by the corner. I was told that this was placed there as a charm or amulet, by a Mahomedan priest passing through this place. Here I observed one of the largest cotton trees I ever saw, except one on the banks of the river Niger, which I measured when engaged in the Niger expedition in 1841. That measured fifty-seven feet, but the caboceer of Aladda objected to my measuring this without the King’s leave. June 8th.--We marched from Aladda at forty minutes past nine, bearing N. two miles, then NN.W. three miles, and reached Atoogo, a small kroom of one hundred inhabitants, the country still thickly wooded with immense large and straight trees of various species. Bearing still NN.W. at two miles reached Assewhee, a small kroom of twenty huts; and at two miles further, with several bends in the road, but general bearing NN.W., arrived at Havee, a kroom of three hundred inhabitants, the land well cultivated round and near the kroom. Near this place, and for several miles which we had passed, an extraordinary number of butterflies, of various sorts and colours, were assembled in immense heaps on different spots on the road. Sometimes we clapped a hat upon the heap, and secured fifty or sixty. Upon inquiring as to the cause of such singular assemblies, the natives, in their own language, told me that it was a butterfly school: but upon again pressing them with the question, why they selected one particular spot, I was told, that whenever any person had occasion to make water, the spot was immediately covered with butterflies. Upon minute observation I found this perfectly correct.