VOYAGE TO THE NIGER. 53 
miles: it nowise differs from the main river, except that the 
stream is somewhat narrower. By four o’clock we returned 
to the point of junction ; and during our short stay, a great 
many canoes- assembled about us. Some were large and 
carried twelve or sixteen persons, others fewer; and some 
had only one in them. The canoes are the same as before, - 
with a high and broad stern. One man stood steering with a 
paddle. "There were perhaps sixteen canoes, containing 
about one hundred and ten people, who had come mostly 
from Obiah, on the right shore of the river. "Their dress had 
nothing very peculiar. The main difference consisted in the 
various coral and pearl strings, or ivory and brass rings, 
whieh they wore on arms and legs, and in the manner of 
dressing the hair. The latter struck us particularly, now 
that so many individuals had collected, and we could look 
down on their heads, from the deck of ourship. Some had 
cut their hair so round and formally, that it bore the most 
deceptive semblance to a wig: some shaved their heads 
quite bald; while others only kept a portion of hair behind, 
or a large portion forming a narrow ridge across, or it was 
allowed to grow high in the middle of the head, like a small 
steeple. Some whimsical fellows exhibited merely a narrow 
Strip of hair from behind to the front, looking like the crest 
of a helmet, 'or perhaps an oblong square; or it was cut in 
chequers, and the remaining portion twisted into numbers of 
little tails; while others wore their hair like our European 
dandies, arranged in various ways on the sides of the head. 
The river,* at the separation of the Benin (Warree) branch, 
* The branch which here separates from the Nun or main branch of 
the Delta of the Niger, runs to the sea by the town of Warree or Warri, 
falling intothe Bight of Benin to the north-west of the mouth of the 
un river. Captain Becroft of the Ethiope, Mr. Jamieson’s steamer, 
Was the first to ascend the Niger by this branch, in 1840. Lieutenant 
Allen had previously conjectured it to be the Benin river, with which, 
however, there is only a communication by creeks, This accounts for 
Dr. Vogel calling it the Benin branch in his J ournal. : 
Above the separation of these two branches, the river may be properly 
