Page:Mission to Gelele vol 1.djvu/50

30 A MISSION TO GELELE. and even the present century, the "champaigns and small ascending hills beautified with always green shady groves of lime, wild orange, and other trees, and irrigated with divers broad fresh rivers." And of the multitude of little villages that belonged to Whydah in the days of her independence, it may be said that their ruins have perished.

We landed as ceremoniously as I had embarked. The Commodore had dwelt long enough in Africa and amongst the Africans, properly to appreciate the efficacy of "apparatus" in the case of the first Government mission. Commander Ruxton, R.N., whose gun-vessel, the Pandora, still remained in the roads when H.M.S.S. Antelope, after firing her salute, departed, kindly accompanied us. After a rough and stormy night we landed, at 10 a.m., in a fine surf-boat belonging to Mr. Dawson, of Cape Coast Castle, ex-missionary and actual merchant at Whydah; its strong knees and the rising cusps of the stem and stern acting as weather-boards, are required in these heavy seas that dash upon