t rid of them." To
this proposal, after a grumble, he assented, and they departed.

The following morning we weighed, and made all sail for Cape Coast Roads.
On our passage we experienced heavy squalls of wind and rain, which
frequently obliged us to clew all up. We anchored at Sierra Leone on the
fourth day, and found the colony healthy. After remaining two days to
complete our water, we left it, and proceeded to our destination. We
anchored off Cape Coast a few days afterwards, at a respectable distance,
as the surf breaks two miles from the shore. The ship's boats on this part
of the coast are useless. Were they to attempt to land they would soon be
swamped and knocked to pieces, and the crews drowned. Native canoes of
from eight to twenty paddles are only used, and it requires great caution
and dexterity by the black boatmen to prevent their being upset. I once
came off in a large canoe with twenty paddles. On the third rolling surf
she was half filled, and I was washed out of the chair among the paddlers.
As soon as the sails were furled, a large canoe came off from the Governor
with an invitation for the captain to dine with him. I remarked that the
greater part of the coal-coloured crew of the canoe had the wool on their
heads tied into about thirty tails an inch in length. A painter might have
manufactured a tolerable Gorgonian head from among them.

On the following day we were visited by several flat-nosed, thick-lipped,
black-skinned ladies, who came off with the express purpose of being
married to some of the man-of-war buckras. They soon found husbands. In
the afternoon a canoe came alongside with a tall grasshopper of a woman as
ugly as sin and as black as the ace of spades, with a little girl about
seven years old a shade, if possible, blacker, and as great a beauty as
herself. One of the canoe men came on the quarter-deck with them. He made
a leg and pulled one of the many tails of his wool, and addressed me as
follows: "Massa officer, Massa Buckra Captain hab sent him wife off and
him piccaninny." Saying this he gave me a note, which was addressed to his
steward, the barber, who came and told me, to my amazement, that the
animal on two ill-formed legs was to have the use of the captain's cabin.
Thinks I to myself, "Wonders will never cease. There is no accounting for
taste. Some people are over nice, some not nice enough." About two hours
after our gallant captain came on board, I presume love-sick, for