310 
OBAH, KING OF BENIN. 
and goora-nuts, and said he would soon get articles for 
traffic, goats, fowls, &c., and that on the return of the 
vessels, wood should be ready cut. 
His country seems to be populous, and he said to 
the interpreter, that their King Obah of Benin could raise 
10,000 fighting men. This information, perhaps, was 
intended to be conveyed to their opposite neighbours, 
and was probably over-rated. 
According to the account they gave of the King 
of Benin, he must be most remorseless in the ob- 
servance of human sacrifices. Independently of the 
numbers immolated at special feasts, three are de- 
stroyed every day ; one each morning, noon, and night. 
The great difficulty in such cases, is to arrive at the 
truth ; the estimated number of victims varying, in all 
likelihood, with the caprice or love of the marvellous in 
the relating party. If the people had here been told we 
came to put down such odious proceedings, they would 
most certainly have said, as at Abbh and Iddah, “ Oh, 
human sacrifices never take place in Benin country.’^ 
The wooding was carried on actively, the Krumen 
making the forest echo cheerily with their good-humoured 
laughter, and the heavy stroke of the axe. The natives, 
from time to time, came down in little parties ; all rather 
rough in manner, and still more rudely attired, having 
merely strips of monkey skins, or bunches of grass, 
to conceal a very small part of their nakedness. In 
their grass hats were some beautiful scarlet feathers, 
such as we had not seen in any bird up the 
