Travels Of Richard And John Lander Into The Interior Of Africa For The Discovery Of The Course And Termination Of The Niger By Robert Huish
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Six Of Her Crew, Who Were Ill Of The Fever, And Who
Were Still Indisposed, Likewise Resided In The Town.
Of all the wretched, filthy, and contemptible places in this world of
ours, none can present to the eye of a stranger so miserable an
appearance, or can offer such disgusting and loathsome sights as this
abominable Brass Town.
Dogs, goats, and other animals were running
about the dirty streets half starved, whose hungry looks could only
be exceeded by the famishing appearance of the men, women, and
children, which bespoke the penury and wretchedness to which they
were reduced, while the sons of many of them were covered with odious
boils, and their huts were falling to the ground from neglect and
decay.
Brass, properly speaking, consists of two towns of nearly equal size,
containing about a thousand inhabitants each, and built on the
borders of a kind of basin, which is formed by a number of rivulets,
entering it from the Niger through forests of mangrove bushes. One of
them was under the domination of a noted scoundrel, called King
Jacket, to whom a former allusion has been made, and the other was
governed by a rival chief, named King Forday. These towns are
situated directly opposite each other, and within the distance of
eighty yards, and are built on a marshy ground, which occasions the
huts to be always wet. Another place, called Pilot's Town by
Europeans, from the number of pilots that reside in it, is situated
nearly at the mouth of the first Brass River, which the Landers
understood to be the "Nun" River of the Europeans, and at the
distance of sixty or seventy miles from hence.
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