196 
A PASSENGER. 
board ; and this was the more probable, as they took 
with them from the larger canoe, the yams, fniit and 
and fowls, which had, perhaps, been brought off as a 
dash” or present, in return for the admiration they 
expected to receive. 
The men here, as well as most of those we have 
seen of the true Ibu race, were stout and well made, of 
middling stature. The mark down the forehead is not 
general, appearing, as well as the various other tattoed 
lines, to depend more on individual caprice, than to be 
any national distinction. This applies also to the mode 
of arranging the woolly ornaments of their heads ; in 
which taste assumed a variety of fantastic forms, as we 
had full opportunity of observing in the specimens — 
about two hunch'ed and fifty — collected alongside. While 
some had them in full expansion, like a large wig, others 
went to the opposite extreme of fashion, and exhibited 
their closely-shaven crowns, glittering in the mid-day 
vertical sun like polished ebony. The major part, however, 
showed a happy medium. One of our visitors at Oniah, 
a native of Ibu, and a relative of King Obi, begged 
for a passage with us. He remembered Commander W. 
Allen when on the former Expedition with Lander, and 
also Brown, the coloured clerk. .He said, that after our 
departure, his royal relative was so anxious that the 
white men should come back, that he had prayed for 
it during three moons. One of the many curious coin- 
cidences that have occurred, was almost immediately 
on the arrival of this man on the quarter-deck ; he and 
