Note 24 — Chapter VI · MUTINIES ABOARD SLAVE SHIPS IN THE EARLY DAYS

Over a century later, Commander Forbes of the British Navy witnessed a similar sacrifice in the Dahomey country, when twelve victims, lashed hands and feet and tied in small baskets, were carried around the court and after a ceremony thrown from a parapet into a pit below. “The fall, upwards of twelve feet, may have stunned the victims and before sense could return, their heads were cut off and the bodies thrown to the mob, who, now armed with clubs and branches, brutally mutilated the bodies and dragged them to a distant pit.” Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans, London, 1850.