500 The last Journal of W. A. Forbes. 



Aug. 8th. Off Lagos about 7 a.m. Quite a fleet of steamers 

 there — ^Corisco'' (homeward)j 'Kinsembo^ (west coast), 

 ' Malembe ^ and ' Winnebah '' (Hamburg), also one or two 

 smaller branch and bar boats. Rowland gone to Accra. 

 Quite cool and cloudy, with slight swell. 



Aug. 9th. Cool and cloudy still, with calm sea. Land in 

 sight at daybreak, low and flat. Anchored in Bonny river off 

 the town about 1.30. Coming in on a sandy spit below ''Rough 

 Corner ^^ (the white-men's burying-ground) is a great colony 

 of a large grey-mantled Tern, Sterna melanotis \_S. caspia'\ . 

 Went on shore about 3 p.m. with Ashbury and John Jumbo^s 

 clerk and brother-in-law (white). Interviewed J. J., who 

 gave us a guide through the town to show us the juju-house 

 (much neglected), church, and other sights. Many of the 

 unmarried girls up to 17 or so quite nude, as are all the 

 children up to 10 or 12. Men wear a loin-cloth, or a shirt, 

 drawers, &c. of European stuffs, and married women clothed 

 below navel. Many of the children and girls stencilled, often 

 very beautifully and elaborately, all over with a native dye 

 from a green pomegranate-like fruit, simulating tattooing. 

 The street very narrow and in part paved with a large 

 Cardium. The houses of wattle, the interstices filled up with 

 mud, and the roofs palm-thatched or corrugated zinc. Some 

 fine old forest-trees on outskirts of town, also bush, with 

 many ferns (especially a large Osmunda, with fertile apex 

 only of pinnules of fronds), and mangrove-swamps. Saw an 

 Elaphocerium growing on a big tree. In Jumbo's garden a 

 fine frangipani shrub in flower, with Merium, or yellow papi- 

 lionaceous shrub, roses, Carica, &c. In the mangrove-swamp 

 an Anophthalmus in swarms, going on land when disturbed, 

 and hopping, duck-and-drake-like, over water like a lot 

 of tadpoles. Many land-crabs also. Of birds saw Vidua 

 principalis, a Nectarinia, a Drymoeca (?), and others. 



Aug. 10th. From ship in morning saw a large flock of 

 Pelicans on sandy spit on right of river, also a largish 

 white Ardea, and a black-and-white Eagle flying over water 

 (? Gypohierax) . Went on shore about 10, and took about 

 twelve photos of town and natives, juju-house, church, and 



