Up the Niger (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE MOUTHS OF THE NIGER. 7 gaudy bunting and propelled by numbers of almost naked slaves, shouting in time to the dip of their paddles, entered the Bonny Paver from the Opobo Creek and the New Calabar River, and drew up on the shore above the factories. Early in the afternoon the chiefs, dressed in their best, proceeded to the palaver-house, where the ceremony took place. It was of short duration, and merely consisted of an address from the head chiefs and the offering up of juju to their gods, each party vying with the other to offer the strongest juju, or that which they considered would have most weight with their fetishes. The men of New Calabar poured out libations of trade gin as their peace-offering, while the chiefs of Opobo had provided themselves with a human leg sewn up in cloth, which was no doubt considered by all present as the stronger juju of the two, for, on the conclusion of the palaver, the New Calabar men hurried home, to all appearances thoroughly scared, and the fear of bringing down the anger of their gods upon their heads will probably prevent them in the future from picking a quarrel with the men of Opobo. These chiefs, or " kings" as they delight to be called, are powerful men in the land, and the whole trade of the country passes through their hands. They are the middlemen of the palrn oil trade, and send their domestic slaves into the interior to buy up the oil from the natives and then barter it for English goods with the white traders. The system is one of trust, the king being allowed to keep a running account, and usually being well in the debt of the white man. Leaving Bonny at daybreak on July 24th, in one of the Liverpool trading steamers, we crossed the bar at the entrance of the Nun mouthl of the River Niger about8 AKASSA. 1 This mo...