hurts my heart to see how cruel these people are. And those awful, ugly,
cruel gods they pray to. The chiefs are so cruel and mean and have no
mercy. And then that terrible secret society, the Egbo. I saw some of their
runners dressed in fearful costumes scaring the people and whipping them
with long whips. I saw a poor man whom they had beaten almost to
death. Then there is that horrible drinking. They are worse than wild
animals when they become drunk. And worst of all is that they have slaves
and sell their own people as slaves."

"Ah, lassie," said Mammy Anderson, "you haven't seen anything yet. There
are millions of these black people in the bush and far back in the
interior. Most of them are slaves. They don't treat a slave any better than
a pig. The slaves sleep on the ground like animals. They are branded with a
hot iron just as animals are. And just as the farmers back home fatten a
pig for market, so the girls are fattened and sold for slave wives. The
slaves can be whipped or sold or killed. When a chief dies, the tribe cuts
off the heads of his wives and slaves and they are buried with him. The
tribes are wild and cruel. Many of them are cannibals, who eat people. They
spend their lives in fighting, dancing, and drinking. But the way they
treat twins is one of the worst things they do."

"What do they do to twins?" asked Mary.

"They kill them," said Mammy Anderson. "Sometimes they bury the twins
alive and sometimes they just throw them out into the bush to die of
hunger. The mother is driven into the bush. No one will have anything to do
with her. She is left to die in the jungle or to be eaten by the wild
animals."

"But why do they do such cruel, wicked things to harmless babies?" asked