The journey from Makun to Mahin followed the narrow Lagos channel or lagoon, passed several fishing villages near the Ilaje/Ijebu border to the region of modern Atijere, the first major Ilaje village and eastward to Aboto, Mahin and Ugbo, all inhabited by the Ilaje. Beyond Mahin the route led to Jakpa and Ughorton, the Benin entrepot. This was a frontier region traversing numerous Yoruba-speaking groups such as the Ijebu, Ikale and Ilaje and the Ijo, Itsekiri and Edo of the Niger Delta. Traders crossed political and cultural boundaries in rapid succession. In the seventeenth century the region was under Benin suzerainty having been captured in the previous century. By the eighteenth century however, Benin power was no longer effective, though Ilaje and Ikale towns still paid tribute to Benin chiefs. Furthermore, from about the mid-eighteenth century a wave of Itsekiri and Ijo populations began to push westward toward Yorubaland in search of farmland and fishing grounds as well as places suitable for trade, canoe making and salt production. Thus, at the time of Osifekunde's journey the coastal region of southeastern Yorubaland was in a state of socio-economic and political flux with no single state wielding effective control. The plurality of states,  
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[^0]:    8 Osifekunde's claim that Mahin was an Ijebu border town is wrong but it alludes to turbulence in coastal Yorubaland in the early nineteenth century and Ijebu trying to annex her neighbors. D'Avezac, Notice, p. 30. Santana accepted the claim. See Santana, "Extraordinaria," p. 13.  
9 Santana theorizes that Osifekunde "could have sold or exchanged captives for European goods he intended to sell in Mahin." See "Extraordinaria," p. 13. This is doubtful since slave trading was a risky and expensive business with huge outlay in security, weapons, and cash. Existing evidence depicts Osifekunde as a small retailer trading in a small canoe on the Lagos lagoon.