LECTURE II. 45 



often found that I rose in the estimation of the people 

 among whom I passed, when it was told I was an 

 Englishman, one of that country which is engaged in 

 putting down slavery: they called me "the right sort of 

 white man." 



In the middle of the country they passed me off in 

 a way that I scarcely liked. The people imagine that 

 all white people, and the manufactures they import, come 

 out of the sea, and suppose that the whites live under 

 the water; also, that if they leave slaves, fruits, &c. on 

 the sea-shore, that then the white men come up and 

 take them away. My men were asked, Whether I came 

 out of the sea \ " Yes, 1 ' said they, " don't you see how 

 straight the water has made his hair? 1 "' Not relishing 

 the idea of being passed off as a merman, I endeavoured 

 to dissipate the idea, but the story was too good to be 

 easily got rid of. The Africans, whose hair is all wool, 

 could not understand my head, and some of them declared 

 that I wore a wig made of a lion's mane l . 



1 This idea of the white man actually living in the sea is largely pre- 

 valent in Africa. One cause of the terror of the natives at the European 

 is, a report maliciously spread about that the white man takes the slaves 

 into the sea, and actually eats them. Major Laing's experience was 

 somewhat like Dr Livingstone's. He penetrated into Africa, in T822, 

 from Sierra Leone, as far as Soolimana, and relates the following piece 

 of African droll simplicity concerning himself. Among the Kooranko 

 people he was hailed with delighted astonishment, as being the first 

 white man they had ever seen. All classes vied in doing him honour. 

 The men and women sung in alternate choruses as follows : the men 

 sung, "Of the white man who came out of the water to live among the 



