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.

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