It Was Certainly The First Time That Richard Lander Had Been Called In To Exercise His Surgical Skill, And It Must Be Admitted That In One Sense, He Was Well Adapted For The Character Of A Bone-Setter, Or Other Offices For Which The Gentlemen Of The Lancet Are Notorious.

This trait in his character consisted in a gravity of countenance well befitting the individual, who presents himself to his anxious patient, to pronounce the great question of life and death, and the greater the ignorance of the individual, the deeper and more solemn is the countenance, which he assumes.

If Richard Lander had been in the least inclined to a risible disposition, perhaps no occasion was more likely to call it into action, than when he saw himself followed by two or three hundred savages, under an imputation of possessing the power of curing an individual, who had been stabbed nearly to the heart, when at the same time, he knew as much of the art of stopping an haemorrhage, as he did of the art of delivering one of the queens of Badagry of an heir to "the golden stool." Fortunately, however, for the new debutant in the medical profession, the victim of the assassin had died a few minutes before the English doctor arrived, and right glad he was, for had he found his patient alive, and he had afterwards died, no doubt whatever rested on his mind, that his death would be attributed to the want of skill on the part of his medical attendant, who, by way of reward for his interference, would have run no small risk of being buried in the same grave as the individual, whose life he had sacrificed to his ignorance and want of skill. From this dilemma he was fortunately relieved, but he had scarcely returned to his habitation, than he was called upon to attend a fetish, or a religious rite, that was to be performed over the remains of a native, who had been found dead, but who was in perfect health a few hours before. This kind of coroner's inquest appeared most strange to the travellers, when it was well known to them that the king of Badagry, so far from following the example of other kings, who are so extremely anxious about the life of their subjects, often amuses himself with chopping off two or three hundred heads of his subjects, in order that the path to his apartments may be paved with their skulls; and should there not be quite a sufficient number to complete the job, the deficiency is made up with the same indifference, as a schoolboy strikes off the heads of the poppies in the corn fields. The ceremony observed at this fetish, had a great resemblance to an Irish wake; and could the mourners have been able to obtain the requisite supply of spirits, there is very little doubt that there would not have been a mourner present, who would not have exhibited himself in the state of the most beastly intoxication.

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