The People Thus Sacrificed Are Generally Prisoners Of War, Whom The King Often Puts Aside For This Purpose, Several Months Previously To The Celebration Of His Horrid Festival; Should There Be Any Lack Of These, The Number Is Made Up From The Most Convenient Of His Own Subjects.

The number of these victims sometimes amount to several hundred, but about seventy are the average number.

Their bodies are either thrown out into the fields, to be devoured by vultures and wild beasts, or hung by the heels in a mutilated state upon the surrounding trees, a practice exceedingly offensive in so hot a climate. The heads are piled up in a heap for the time, and afterwards disposed of in decorating the walls of the royal simbonies, or palaces, some of which are two miles in circumference, and often require a renewal and repair of these ornaments.

An anecdote is related of king Adahoouza, who, on a successful attack upon Badagry, having a great number of victims to sacrifice, ordered their heads to be applied to the above purpose. The person to whom the management of this business was committed, having neglected to make a proper calculation of his materials, had proceeded too far with his work, when he found that there would not be a sufficient number of skulls to adorn the whole palace; he therefore requested permission to begin the work, as the lawyers would say, de novo, in order that he might, by placing them farther apart, complete the design in a regular manner; but the king would by no means give his consent to this proposal, observing that he would soon find a sufficient number of Badagry heads to render the plan perfectly uniform, and learning that a hundred and twenty seven were required to complete this extraordinary embellishment, he ordered that number of captives to be brought forth and slaughtered in cold blood.

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