his happy circumstance afforded them an opportunity, and
ample leisure for spending the Sabbath in a manner most agreeable to
their feelings; by devoting the greater part of it to the impressive
duties of their divine religion, in humbling themselves before the
mercy seat of the great Author of their being, and imploring him to
be their refuge and guardian, to shield them from every danger, and
to render their undertakings hopeful and prosperous.

As yet no crime of any peculiar atrocity had been committed, to
impress the travellers with an unfavourable opinion of the moral
character of the people amongst whom they were then residing, but on
this evening of the Sabbath, a Fantee was robbed of his effects, and
stabbed by an assassin below the ribs, so that his life was despaired
of. The most unlucky part, however, of this tragical affair to
Richard Lander, was, that the natives, from some cause, which he
could not divine, had imbibed the conceit that he was skilled in
surgery. In vain, he protested that he knew nothing of the anatomy of
the human frame--there were many present, who knew far better than he
did himself, and therefore, _nolens volens,_ he was obliged to visit
the patient. It was certainly the first time that Richard Lander had
been called in to exercise his surgical skill, and it must be
admitted that in one sense, he was well adapted for the character of
a bone-setter, or other offices for which the gentlemen of the lancet
are notorious. 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 fo