day: with a load of 200 lbs. they keep pace with a carriage without difficulty, and are then much preferable to any other mode of conveyance for baggage, as no roads, however bad, can stop them, while with any thing upon wheels, difficulties are constantly occurring.
None of our party had suffered from sickness on the journey, yet we were all much fatigued on reaching the Capital. There is something very trying at first in the climate of the Tropics, particularly where, as in our case, the sedentary life of a ship is exchanged for one of sudden and violent exertion. The transition, too, from the relaxing heat of the Coast, to the rarefied atmosphere of the Table-land, was severely felt by us all. We had disdained to use the precautions which the natives uniformly take when travelling, by muffling up the lower part of the face in a white handkerchief, and the consequence was that our lips were cracked by the sun, and the peculiar subtility of the air, in a manner that long left us a painful recollection of our journey. In every other respect we could only look back to it with pleasure. We had traversed a country, hitherto visited by very few of our countrymen, where, if there were but few beauties, there was novelty in abundance to attract us, and we had received, at every step, the most unequivocal proofs, that the Commission with which we were entrusted was a most acceptable one to the great mass of the inhabitants. Many of them termed the commence-
