TOWN OF ABOH. 
239 
are thus placed ! Taught from their earliest years to 
live on in uncertainty, and knowing not the moment 
when their ruthless adversaries may destroy them or 
bear them away into captivity, they become indifferent 
to improvement, the natural ties of affection are 
weakened, and we find each living for the day and for 
self. Can we wonder that the benighted and degraded 
negro turns so often his thoughts and prayers to his 
favourite Fetiche or idol, and in the contemplation of 
forthcoming good or averted evil offers the idolatrous 
worship of his heart ? 
From what we learned, it seems probable that since 
the Slave Trade has declined in the Brass and Bonny 
Rivers, the greater portion of the slaves, collected by the 
Ibu people, are sent down in canoes by the Benin 
branch to the sea-coast, thence they are forwarded 
through the Lagos creek to Lagos and Whydah, two of 
the most notorious haunts of the Brazilian slave-ships, 
and whence more unfortunate beings are shipped off 
than from any other place on the west coast, as the 
more recent enquiries into the odious traffic too surely 
prove. 
Abbh is much the largest town in the Delta of the 
Niger, though we consider seven or eight thousand to 
be the extreme number of its inhabitants. Obi Osai, 
the King of Ibu, is therefore one of the most powerful 
and influential rulers on the banks of the river, which is 
aided much by the position of his town, Aboh, at the 
upper part of the Delta, enabling him to control verv 
