ses, and several strings of
coral, silver rings, and bracelets, with a number of other trifling
articles. After a number of compliments, and giving her favoured
visitor an account of all her wealth, he was led through one
apartment into another, cool, clean, and ornamented with pewter
dishes and bright brass pans. She now entered into the history of her
private life, commencing with bewailing the death of her husband, who
had now been dead ten years, during all of which time she had mourned
after him excessively. She had one son, the issue of her marriage,
but he was much darker than herself. With a frankness perfectly
commendable in an African widow, and wholly at variance with the
hypocritical and counterfeit bashfulness of the English one, the
widow Zuma at once exposed the situation of her heart, by declaring
that she sincerely loved white men, and as her visitor belonged to
that species, he saw himself at once the object of her affections,
and the envy of all the aspiring young bachelors of the town, who had
been for some time directing a vigorous attack against the widow's
heart. The denouement of an English court-ship is frequently
distinguished by an elopement; but although it was the last of
Clapperton's thoughts to run away with such an unwieldy mass of human
flesh, yet she very delicately proposed to him, that she would send
for a malem, or man of learning, who should read the fetah to them,
or, in other words, that no time whatever should be lost in endowing
the widow Zuma with all claim, right, title, and privilege to be
introduced at the court of Wawa, or any other court in Africa, or
even at that time at the virtuous and formal court of queen Charlotte
of England, as the spouse of Captain Clapperton, of the royal navy of
Great Britain.

Clapperton was now convinced that the widow was beginning to carry
the joke a little too far, for she assured him, that she should
commence immediately to pack up all her property, and accompany him
to his native country, assuring him, at the same time, that she felt
within herself every requisite qualification to make him a good,
_active,_ and affectionate wife. Clapperton, however, was by no means
disposed to enter so suddenly into a matrimonial speculation, and he
began to look rather serious at the offer which was so unexpectedly,
but so lovingly made to him. This being observed by the widow, she
sent for her looking-glass, and after having taken a full examination
o