Excerpt from the log of Capt. Hugh McNeil[e] Dyer, R.N. on a mission to Nigeria, Africa, to try to stop the slave trade.
H.M.S. Torch - In the Opobo River, December 21, 1872
I arrived in the Bonny on the 17th and having received letters from home, and dispatched the homeward mail, I returned outside the bar of the river and anchored, nearly out of sight of land, to wait the Commodore’s arrival from Fernando Po. I found the consul, Mr. Charles Livingstone, an elder brother of the Doctor’s, in the river. The Rattlesnake arrived on the 18th, and on the 19th, at daylight I took the Commodore and his staff up to the town of Grand Bonny to hold a palaver with King George Pepple and his powerful chief Oko Jumbo.
The Bonny is one of many mouths to the mighty river Niger, and another river is also connected with the Niger, the New Calabar joins it as it enters the sea. These African rivers are all alike at their mouths. They are bounded by low mudbanks covered with the mangrove tree which sometimes grow 150 feet high, sometimes a mere bush. These trees grow so closely together that you never see through them, and the exhalation from the swamps on which they grow is so deadly that even the natives do not build their huts until the mangrove gives place to palms and other trees, for the mangrove cannot grow without salt water, so that beyond the tidal limit it ceases.
Bonny is a very large trading station. The traders live in hulks on the river, as being more healthy places to live in than houses on shore. There are twelve of these hulks all housed in with high roofs of galvanized iron or palm thatch, giving them a very odd appearance. There are some large stores for oil on shore, and a missionary station consisting of a small wooden church and three frame houses. I had not time to land but I believe the missionaries are natives. A large native town is at the back. This belongs to King George Pepple. His father was considered one of the most powerful African kings on the coast and he was rich. Not twenty years ago the old fellow played an amusing trick upon some of our countrymen. He bought a brig and employed a not very scrupulous agent to engage an English secretary, gardener, governess for his children, maid of honour to his queen, and the officials to come out in this vessel, promising high salaries, apartment in the Royal Palace, and other advantages to these persons.
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