DEDICATED, BY PERMISSION, TO HER MAJESTY. GEOGRAPHY OR First Division of "The English Cyclopædia," CONDUCTED BY CHARLES KNIGHT. SUPPLEMENT. LONDON: BRADBURY, EVANS, & CO., 11, BOUVERIE ST., FLEET ST., E.C. NOTICE. THE articles in this SUPPLEMENT are strictly supplementary to those in the ENGLISH CYCLOPÆDIA. For general information on any place or subject the original article should therefore be first consulted in the Supplement will then be found such additional information as will render the article complete to the present time. In British Topography places which do not occur under their proper titles should be looked for under the counties to which they belong. GEOGRAPHY. SUPPLEMENT. The abbreviations E. C. and E. C. S. signify the English Cyclopædia and English Cyclopædia Supplement. ABEAHKEUTAH, or ABEOKUTAH in the more recent of the houses, large irregular squares, with huge thatches raised form, has become better known since the original article high at the angles to throw off the rain." "The men," says was written. It is situated in 7° 8′ N, lat. and 3° 20' E. long. Major Burton, "are farmers, blacksmiths, wood-workers, carThe distance from Lagos is about 50 miles in a straight line, but penters, weavers, tailors, and barbers. Women do the houseby water, by the Cradoo lagoon and the river Ogun, the most hold work and sell at market; between whiles they spin, wash, frequented route, it is 80 miles. The town lies at the extremity work, cook, draw water, and make soap and pottery.' Murder of the navigation of the Ogun, which is ascended by steam- is punished by death, as are sometimes theft and adultery, and vessels of light draught during about eight months in the for minor offences whipping, fines, and imprisonment are year, and at other times by canoes and small boats; the gate of inflicted. At the city gates an octroi duty is levied, corn and Aso being the port during the rainy season from March to wines being the most heavily taxed. The general revenue is November, and that of Agbameya, something lower, during the raised from police dues, duties on imports and exports, and from dry season. Above Aso boulders and slabs of gneiss, banded forced labour; with, on occasions of emergency, a sort of pollwith quartz, stretch across the river, and render navigation tax on each household. The total amount has not been ascerimpracticable, as similar obstructions continue to recur. The tained, but the missionaries estimate the taxation at about one stone from which the town takes its name, has no cave, nor is per cent. on the income. Trade is active. Palm-oil, puncheons, the market held there. It is a large stone or rock about 200 and cask-houses, are seen at the river-ports. The markets are yards in length, with a rift about the middle by which the crowded; they commence at dawn, are fullest a little before ascent can be made to the top, which overhangs the base on all sunset, and are continued by a few into the night by means of sides but the north; the projections afford some shelter, and on lighted lamps. The goods vended are of a highly miscellaneous the eastern side a few dwellings have been constructed beneath character; native food, cooked and uncooked, dried fish from them by forming an outer wall of red-clay. The rock itself, Lagos, palm, sesamum, and other oils; shea, or tree butter, a stern gray mass, called Olumo, or the Builder, stands on a destined, as Major Burton thinks, to "become one of the most considerable hill, and thus becomes a landmark for a great dis- considerable of Africa's many products;" India and Guinea tance around. In the town there are several rocks of a similar corn; ground nuts; tobacco, chiefly Brazilian; fruits, among character, but much smaller. The population is now supposed which are pine-apples, bananas, papaws, oranges, and waterto reach 150,000, that of the whole state about 200,000, on an melons; vegetables, as sweet potatoes, cocoas, sugar-cane, and area of about 2000 square miles. onions; bracelets of brass, iron, tin, and copper, of native manuMajor R. F. Burton, who visited it in 1861, has furnished facture; with knives, cutlasses, scissors, pins, needles, hoes, and the most recent reliable information on the subject, though his bill-hooks from Europe; there are raw silks, broadcloths, and account is not so flattering, nor his hopes of its growing import- velvets, country cloths of grass and other fibres; calico, shirtance to European commerce so sanguine, as previous accounts ings, cottons, tapes, threads, yarns, and reels of cotton; houssamight have warranted. He describes the natives as incurably caps; ropes and lines; excellent leather, like that of Morocco, idle, the town as filthily dirty. The wall, it is true, is 20 miles in flasks, saddles, straps, and cushions; gunpowder; stationery, in circumference, but it is only from five to six feet in height, brooms, baskets, raw cotton, and cowries; a variety beyond built with hardened mud, thatched with palm-leaves, pierced power to enumerate, including horse and cow-dung, here used here and there with a loophole, but without embrasures. There for plastering floors and walls, the whole giving out a comis also a ditch about five feet broad running outside the wall, bined aroma, which," says Major Burton, on a warm morning with but little water, and half filled up with bushes. In the and an empty stomach was as startling to the olfactory, wall there are 5 gates, at each of which are placed receivers as the awful hubbub was to the auditory nerves.' of toll during the day, and which are shut at night. The The town has a Christian church of wood, with a mud steeple, and streets are generally narrow, always irregular, intersecting each in it a clock. It has also a newspaper, printed in the Egba other in every direction, and wherever one is found broad and tongue, the workmen being the boys or youths from the misshady, that is certainly a market-place. The houses are built of sionary schools. hardened mud, with thatched roofs, windowless to keep out the sun, with inner courts, and may contain from ten to twenty rooms. The cooking, and frequently the sleeping, takes place within these courts, and there also are kept the sheep and goats. The furniture of the dwellings is simple, a few earthen pots, grass bags, and weapons, the occupants varying in number from ten to five hundred, a barrack rather than a house. Generally there is but a single large outer-door. Looking from the Olumo stone, the town showed, says Major Burton, "a grisly mass of rusty thatching and dull-red-clay wall, with narrow winding lanes and irregular open spaces, a ragged tree rising here and the main peculiarity of the scene is the shape there GEOG. DIV.-SUP. On Sunday, Oct. 13th, 1867, an outbreak of a singular character occurred. An attack was made on the missionary stations, which were plundered, all the missionaries expelled, and at an interview with the chiefs on Oct. 23rd, they were told that it was time for the European missionaries to quit, and leave the propagation of Christianity to the native converts. The district or kingdom of Abeokutah is but small; and the Alake, or chief, somewhat resembles a constitutional king, There are chiefs and elders, commanders of the troops, and administrators of the law, who are nearly independent; but the most curious part of the constitution is the Ogboni lodgesassociations elected by the people. They form a council with the B |