ns of that
Almighty providence, which has comforted us in the hours of
adversity, and relieved us in times of pain and danger, and snatched
us from the jaws of death."

On the following morning, Richard Lander was rather convalescent, and
in truth they both wondered much that their health, generally
speaking, had been so good, when they reflected for a moment on the
hardships and privations, which they had lately undergone, the
perplexities in which they had been entangled, and the difficulties
with which they had had to contend.

During the few days that they had spent in this place, they had been
sadly in want of provisions, and their people, who for the first day
bore their privation in silence, have since then been loud in their
complaints. The constant fear which they entertained of being taken
away and sold, now, however, changed that lively feeling of
discontent into sullen-ness and despondency. What made the matter
still worse was the fact, that having lost their needles and kowries
at Kirree, they had not the means of purchasing any thing, although
the kowrie shell was not current where they then were. Obie was in
the habit of sending them a fowl, or a yam or two every morning, but
as they were ten in number, it made but a slender meal, and it was
barely sufficient to keep them from actual starvation. To stop, if
possible, the sullen murmurings of their people, they were now
reduced to the painful necessity of begging, but they might as well
have addressed their petitions to the stones and trees, and thereby
have spared themselves the mortification of a refusal. They never
experienced a more stinging sense of their own humbleness and
imbecility than on such occasions, and never had they greater need
of patience and lowliness of spirit. In most African towns and
villages, they had been regarded as demi-gods, and treated in
consequence with universal kindness, civility, and veneration; but
here, alas! what a contrast, they were classed with the most degraded
and despicable of mankind, and were become slaves in a land of
ignorance and barbarism, whose savage natives treated them with
brutality and contempt. It would be hard to guess whence these
unkindly feelings originated, but they felt that they had not
deserved them, yet the consciousness of their own insignificance
sadly militated against every idea of self-love or self-importance,
and taught them a plain and useful moral lesson. Although they made
the