town on the Niger; being afterwards joined by some similar adventurers from Bonny River. The three people are closely connected by family ties at this day.
As a rule these people have always had the character of being a well behaved set of men; it is a notable fact in their favour that they were the only people that, once having signed the treaty with Her Majesty's Government to put down slavery, honestly stuck to the terms of the treaty; unlike their neighbours, they did so, though they were the only people who did not receive any indemnity. They, however, have occasionally lost their heads and gone to excesses unworthy of a people with such a good reputation as they have generally enjoyed.
Their last escapade was the attack on the factory of the Royal Niger Company at Akassa some few years ago, and for which they were duly punished; their dual mud and thatch capital was blown down, and one small town called Fishtown destroyed.
Impartial observers must have pitied these poor people driven to despair by being cut off from their trading markets by the fiscal arrangements of the Royal Niger Company. The latter I don't blame very much, they are traders; but the line drawn from Idu to a point midway between the Brass River and the Nun entrance to the Niger River, as being the boundary line for fiscal purposes between the Royal Niger Company and the Niger Coast Protectorate, was drawn by some one at Downing Street who evidently looked upon this part of the world as a cheesemonger would a cheese.
In 1830 it was at Abo on the Niger where Lander the traveller met with the Brassmen, who took him down to Obulambri, but no ship being in Brass River, they took
