The King touched his forehead with his fingers, saying, Englishman was wonderful and good man. He then declared that for his own part he had no wish to maintain the Slave-Trade, neither did he wish to store riches. All he required was to have sufficient income to pay his officers and caboceers the usual quantity of cowries to present his people with, as is usual at the annual custom. This was the full extent of his ambition. I then proposed to him that he should extend agriculture, and establish a permanent trade, which would be encouraged by all civilized nations; and observed, that by imposing a slight duty upon all articles of trade, besides the profits he might obtain, a revenue would be created for him much superior to what he derived from the slave-dealing. He replied, that he was very willing to adopt the proposed measure if England would only make some proposals to him on the subject. I explained at some length the nature and system of trade, with which he was quite unacquainted. He remarked that he had been informed, we had condescended to make treaties with and had sent missionaries to the Calabar and Bonny rivers, to the petty chiefs of those places, whose treaties could be of no permanent duration or benefit, as they possessed no territory, nor had they any fixed laws; besides, they were always involved in wars with the petty neighbouring states; so that they were often chiefs to-day, and had their heads cut off the next; that they could neither ensure any permanent trade with us, nor afford us any protection in the event of our establishing factories at any of these places. He said he should be ready and very glad to make any reasonable arrangement with the English Government for the abolition of slavery, and the establishment of another trade, and added, that though he had invited us to send missionaries to his country to advise with him, none but one English fetishman, Mr. Freeman, the Wesleyan missionary (of whom he spoke highly), had visited him; that all he wanted was to see plenty of Englishmen in his kingdom, and especially in his capital. He also offered to build them houses to live in, without any charge, and give them as much land as they chose to cultivate. He expressed his ardent desire to encourage cultivation and a system of agriculture; and reminded me, that he had long ago issued orders that all the spare land in and round the town of Griwhee (Whydah) should be cultivated with a view of lessening the chances of epidemic diseases. He also expressed his earnest desire to give up Whydah to the English Government, with full powers to exercise our own laws and customs; and also declared his readiness to afford us every necessary assistance and protection, and to give us any quantity of land in the vicinity of that settlement we might require for agricultural purposes.