to the
dust. The weapon was then returned to the woman, who, handing it to
the white men, desired them to unite in the brutal deed! The
strangers, however, not only refused, but, sick at heart, abandoned
the scene of butchery, which lasted, they understood, till noon, when
the amazons were dismissed to their barracks, reeking with rum and
blood.

I have limited the details of this barbarity to the initial cruelties,
leaving the reader's imagination to fancy the atrocities that followed
the second blow. It has always been noticed that the sight of blood,
which appals a civilized man, serves to excite and enrage the savage,
till his frantic passions induce him to mutilate his victims, even as
a tiger becomes furious after it has torn the first wound in its prey.
For five days the strangers were doomed to hear the yells of the
storming amazons as they assailed the fort for fresh victims. On the
sixth the sacrifice was over:--the divinity was appeased, and quiet
reigned again in the streets of Abomey.

Our travellers were naturally anxious to quit a court where such
abominations were regarded as national and religious duties; but
before they departed, his majesty proposed to accord them a parting
interview. He received the strangers with ceremonious politeness, and
called their attention to the throne or royal seat upon which he had
coiled his limbs. The chair is said to have been an heir-loom of at
least twenty generations. Each leg of the article rests on the skull
of some native king or chief, and such is the fanatical respect for
the brutal usages of antiquity, that every three years the people of
Dahomey are obliged to renew the steadiness of the stool by the fresh
skulls of some noted princes!

* * * * *

I was not long enough at Ayudah to observe the manners and customs of
the natives with much care, still, as well as I now remember, there
was great similarity to the habits of other tribes. The male lords it
over the weaker sex, and as a man is valued according to the quantity
of his wives; polygamy, even among civilized residents, is carried to
a greater excess than elsewhere. Female chastity is not insisted on as
in the Mandingo and Soosoo districts, but the husband contents himself
with the seeming continence of his mistresses. Sixty or seventy miles
south of Ayudah, the adulterous wife of a chief is stabbed in the
presence of her relations. Here, also, superstition has set up t