The inhabitants of Benin are divided into three classes. The first consists of the three great lords who attend the king, and through whom alone all requests and applications can he conveyed to the throne. The next class is composed of the viceroys, or governors of provinces, and the street kings, whose efiice somewhat resembles that of our mayors and aldermen. All of these owe their advancement to the recommendation of the three great lords ; and on their appointment are presented by the sovereign with a string of coral, which they wear constantly about their necks, as a badge of their authority. To counterfeit that chain of office is felony ; and even to lose it is inevitable death. The third class includes all the rest of the inhabitants. All these classes are the slaws of the sovereign, whose mandates arc re ceived with the most servile awe. But no subject of the king of Benin can be sold into foreign servitude.N Even those, who are condemned to slavery for their crimes, are never sold to Europeans, nor transported from their native land. The women alone, oppressed and degraded throughout the whole of Africa, do not enjoy the advantage of that merciful law, but aiay be sold and transported at the will of their pa rents and husbands. Male slaves may, indeed, be purchased on the coast of Benin ; but they are all strangers who have been taken in war, or who have fallen by any other accident into the hands of the natives.
The religion of this country is the same which prevails in all the nations of Guinea, and will there fore be more properly described under the article of that name. (See GUINEA.) Polygamy is here al lowed without restriction ; and jealousy, its invariable consequence, is felt in all its violence. Unmarried persons of either sex may indulge the tender passion without censure ; but adultery, when detected, is ge nerally punished with death. Male children are ac counted the property of the king ; but the females are left to the disposal of the parents. Infants of both sexes are circumcised when a fortnight old, and their bodies are marked with incisions, intended to re present particular figures. So strongly are the inha
bitants of Benin attached to their country, that they account it the severest of all misfortunes to be buried in a foreign land. Those, therefore, who happen to die atai distance from home, are preserved for years till their bodies can be conveyed to the spot that gave them birth. The term of mourning for a near rela tive is generally limited to fourteen or fifteen days, and on these occasions it is .usual to shave the head cr beard. The funeral obsequies of their kings are celebrated in a frantic; and barbarous manner. The •tombstone is covered with a banquet of the richest dainties, and the most delicate wines, of which all pre sent are allowed to partake. The mourners, when heated with liquor, run about like madmen, killing all without distinction who come in their way, and having cut off their heads, they carry them to the .rpyal sepulchre, and throw them along with the gar ments and spoils of those whom they have sacrificed, as an offering to the manes of their departed sove reign.
With the exception of the Portuguese, who have an insignificant factory at Awerri, the Dutch are the only Europeans who have any establishments in the kingdom of Benin. The king has allowed them to erect a magazine at Agatton, where they carry on a considerable trade. The 'articles which they export are pepper, ivory, the oil and hark of the palm tree, slaves, leopard skins, and acori, or blue coral. In exchange for these, they import red and scarlet cloths. drinking-cups with red stained brims, all sorts of fine cotton, woollen stuffs, linen-cloth, oranges, lemons, and other green fruits preserved, red velvet, ear-rings of red glass, copper bracelets, fee.
The natives are extremely faithful in their deal= ings, buf so slow, that it is often eight or ten days before they have made the necessary arrangements for a single article of commerce. Every native who en gages in trade, pays a certain sum to government by way of licence, but no duty is levied on the articles in which they traffic. Europeans pay a custom so trifling as scarcely to deserve mention.(14)