Fowle's New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

LONDON, February

Some particulars of the African Prince, now in Paris, and of the customs of his country.

This Prince begins to speak French; he seems to be of the most gentle and tractable disposition. His father said to Captain Ludolf, when he entrusted him to his care, "I hope you will not do any harm to my son."

The young prince, when he left Oere, was accompanied on shipboard by his eighteen wives, and crowds of people followed him to the water-side, entreating him not to leave his father's dominions. The King, his father, is in alliance with the King of Benin: he has sixty-four wives. When the Monarch dies, the following custom of the country is strictly observed: his subjects carry him to a very deep pit sunk in the earth, in the form of a draw-well: they then let him down with ropes, and with him his four principal favourites or ministers; and stopping up the mouth of the pit, or royal grave, they all betake themselves to the woods, to kill as many wild beasts as they can; and cutting off their heads, they carry them to the brink of the grave.

The next day, (24 hours after the body has been in this catacomb) the mouth of the pit is opened, and the son of the deceased cries out in a loud voice, "Is my father risen from the dead?"-The favourites below, if still alive, answer, "no." Twenty thousand men are instantly employed in filling up the pit, with the heads of the wild beasts that had been killed the day before in the woods: and then the tomb is shut up, never to be opened again. The favourites of the King of Oere are distinguished from the vulgar, by cicatrices on their foreheads, made with knives; and which are esteemed as the most honorable marks that the King can possibly bestow.

Capt. Ludolf, who brought the young Prince over to France, is now endeavouring to obtain an exclusive charter to establish factories, and trade along the river Formoo, up from Oere. How far such a charter might affect our African trade may be matter of speculation.