on the lee side of the fire, where the smoke blew over my body. My
host wondered at my want of taste, and I at his want of feeling; for, to
our astonishment, he and the other inhabitants had actually become used
to what was at least equal to a nail through the heel of one's boot, or
the tooth-ache.

As we were now drawing near to the sea, my companions were looking at
every thing in a serious light. One of them asked me if we should all
have an opportunity of watching each other at Loanda. "Suppose one went
for water, would the others see if he were kidnapped?" I replied, "I see
what you are driving at; and if you suspect me, you may return, for I
am as ignorant of Loanda as you are; but nothing will happen to you but
what happens to myself. We have stood by each other hitherto, and will
do so to the last." The plains adjacent to Loanda are somewhat elevated
and comparatively sterile. On coming across these we first beheld
the sea: my companions looked upon the boundless ocean with awe. On
describing their feelings afterward, they remarked that "we marched
along with our father, believing that what the ancients had always told
us was true, that the world has no end; but all at once the world
said to us, 'I am finished; there is no more of me!'" They had always
imagined that the world was one extended plain without limit.

They were now somewhat apprehensive of suffering want, and I was unable
to allay their fears with any promise of supply, for my own mind was
depressed by disease and care. The fever had induced a state of chronic
dysentery, so troublesome that I could not remain on the ox more than
ten minutes at a time; and as we came down the declivity above the city
of Loanda on the 31st of May, I was laboring under great depression of
spirits, as I understood that, in a population of twelve thousand souls,
there was but one genuine English gentleman. I naturally felt anxious
to know whether he were possessed of good-nature, or was one of those
crusty mortals one would rather not meet at all.

This gentleman, Mr. Gabriel, our commissioner for the suppression of the
slave-trade, had kindly forwarded an invitation to meet me on the way
from Cassange, but, unfortunately, it crossed me on the road. When we
entered his porch, I was delighted to see a number of flowers cultivated
carefully, and inferred from this circumstance that he was, what I soon
discovered him to be, a real whole-hearted Englishman.

Seeing me ill