with the Plesiosaurus and other extinct reptiles. Death seems ever at hand, and here he does not appear, as in some parts of West Africa, clothed with sunlight and the beauties of tropical vegetation, but accompanied by all the imperfections of a sewer-like and miasmatic swamp.
The natives of the Niger delta are, with the exception of the Boobies of Fernando Po, the most degraded and barbarous people found on the West Coast of Africa. They are nearly all cannibals, and devour the prisoners whom they capture in their internecine wars. The horrible climate influences even the aborigines, nearly every second man or woman one sees being covered with sores, or suffering from yaws, elephantiasis, or some equally loathsome disease; and their religious belief and fetish customs are tinged with the gloom which seems to settle over the whole delta.
Very little is known of this part of Africa beyond the actual coast line and the Niger river, up which steamers ascend for some hundreds of miles. Between Benin and the Nun mouth the numerous western outlets have not even been surveyed, and we find on the Admiralty Charts "natives hostile and cannibals." In that portion of the delta the inhabitants will hold no friendly intercourse with white men.
