AKASSA. 
169 
mingled with clay of a dirty yellow colour-less inter- 
sected by channels — in which abundance of fresh and 
salt-water shells are found. 
This bank was firm, two feet above the high-water 
mark, and consequently capable of cultivation. The 
plantations were chiefly of plantains. Trees were found 
here more than one hundred feet high, while palms of 
sixty or eighty feet in height expanded their majestic 
leaves. 
On this bank there is a small irregularly built 
village, Akassa, containing about two hundred inhabi- 
tants. The men are well-made and active, and occupy 
themselves in fishing and the culture of small planta- 
tions of cassada, Indian-corn, and bananas. Tobacco, 
and spirituous liquors, of which they are excessively 
fond, are procured in exchange for palm-oil from the 
traders which occasionally touch here; but when the 
slave trade was more actively followed at this branch of 
the Niger, they obtained those luxuries from the slavers, 
for assisting them in shipping off the human cargoes, 
and for keeping watch along the coast for the cruizers. 
The huts are quadrangular, small, but clean dwellings, 
built of bamboo, and roofed with palm-leaves ; they 
are mostly of two compartments, communicating with 
each other. The bed-places are flat narrow boards, 
raised about eighteen inches on four stones. Fires are 
always kept in the huts during the rainy season, and 
when unemployed, the family usually congregate round 
the smoking embers. The chief of this village is 
