Many of the women of Bidjie have the flesh on their foreheads risen
in the shape of marbles, and their cheeks are similarly cut up
deformed. The lobes of their ears are likewise pierced, and the holes
made surprisingly large, for the insertion of pieces of and ivory
into them, which is a prevailing fashion with all ranks.
The church service was read this morning agreeably to their general
custom. The natives, of whose society they were never able to rid
themselves, seemed to attach great awe and reverence to their form of
worship, for they had made them understand what if they were going
about, which induced them to pay a high degree of silent attention to
the ceremony, and set at rest for the time, that peculiar continuous
laugh by which they are distinguished from their neighbours. In the
afternoon, or as the natives express it, when the sun had lost its
strength, they departed from the town of Bidjie, accompanied by its
good natured, happy governor, and in a very few minutes afterwards
reached the banks of a rivulet called Yow. Butterflies were here more
numerous than could be imagined, millions of them fluttered around
them, and literally hid from their sight every thing but their own
variegated and beautiful wings.
Here on the banks of the Yow they took a last farewell of the
affectionate old chief, who implored the "Great God," to bless them,
and as the canoes in which they had embarked moved from the spot, a
loud long laugh, with clapping of hands from the lower classes,
evinced the satisfaction they felt at having seen the white men, and
their hearty wishes for their welfare.
