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She had also a quantity of merchandise on board, without having any Custom-house certificate of clearance from the Havannah, or indeed any other account of it, which circumstances led us to believe that it had been plundered from some American vessel. It was evident that she had been along the Gold Coast, and round the Bights of Benin and Biafra.
There are four principal islands in the Gulf of Guinea, or Bight of Biafra, as it is usually called by English navigators, Ferdinand Poo, Princes isle, St Thomas, and Annobon, the discovery of which have been related as follows by Barbot, and his account seems the most probable . Fernando Lopez discovered the first of these in 1471, in lat. 3° 40' N. giving it the name of Ilha formosa, or the Beautiful Island, which was afterwards changed to that of Fernando Poo, which it still retains.
Filling up with water, the Sumter proceeded to the island of Fernando Po, a Spanish possession close in to the mainland, in the Bight of Biafra, where she met several English and French men-of-war, and received orders for her future movements.
Lat. 1°. 0'. N. On getting into the open sea, we found the weather much colder than it was at Fernando Po, notwithstanding we were 3°. nearer the equinoctial line, than at the former place, while the thermometer for the last twenty-four hours, has only ranged from 74°. to 78°. F. Indeed, it is very commonly remarked, that the poor slaves brought from the Bights of Benin and Biafra, for the Brazils, suffer dreadfully from the cold, when they get into the open sea, and approach the line.
Of this total of 195 ships 43 traded in Senegambia, 29 on the Gold Coast, 56 on the Slave Coast, 63 in the bights of Benin and Biafra, and 4 in Angola. In addition there were sixty or seventy slavers from North America and the West Indies, and these were yearly increasing.
"All very good oysters," quoth old Dick; "and pray was it an honest trick of you to cabbage my young friend, Lieutenant Cringle there, as if you had been slavers kidnapping the Bungoes in the Bight of Biafra, and then to fire on and murder my people when sent in to claim him?"
The tribes that have had the trade of the Bight of Biafra passing through their hands have been accustomed, according to the German Government who are also pressing inland, to make seventy-five per cent. profit on it, and they resent being deprived of this.
"The climate here is so very superior to that in the Bights of Benin and Biafra, that after Barbadoes, where shade is unknown, it really seems comparatively cold; I took a stroll of half a dozen miles to-day before breakfast, which I could not have done, without feeling languid afterwards, in the West Indies, but Tyrwhitt never could have borne the breathing oven of the Gold Coast.
Jack agreed that it would, but both of them began to look very blank when darkness closed in on them, and the chase was still several miles ahead. When the frigate first made out the chase she was standing to the eastward, and was about a hundred miles off Cape Palmas. She was then running towards the Bight of Biafra.
The Bosch-boc, or Bush-goat, is still another of the southern antelopes, which derives its name from its dwelling-place the bushy thickets out of which it never shows itself; and, in addition to all these, there is the Decula of Abyssinia, the Guib of the western coast, the Ingala of Natal, and the Broad-horned antelope of the Bight of Biafra.
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