subject afterwards. He is evidently much in earnest and talks with that
kind of spirit of conviction frequently to be noticed in street
preachers. Several hymns are sung and then the people pass out, dropping
their mitakos into the plate as they do so. In the afternoon, we walk
round the village. Mr. Clarke notices a boy with a malformation of one
knee and speaks to him. He then explains to me that this is another
atrocity, for the boy said he had been shot by the soldiers of the State
when an infant. An examination of the boy however, showed he was
suffering from a kind of bony tumour. There are several chiefs in Ikoko
and one of them also practises as a doctor. He has cleared a space about
ten feet in diameter and enclosed it for a consulting room, while an
inner chamber, still more closely surrounded, is the secret place where
the infusions are made and the charms and fetishes consulted. Although
many of the drugs used, are efficacious or not, according to the faith
of the patient, as in civilised countries, yet the white people
constantly tell of apparently wonderful cures by native doctors, and it
is certain that the people at present prefer to be treated by those of
their own colour. There is also an old lady in Ikoko, the widow of a
chief, who is reported to be very clever as a healer. This old person
has European features but has an unpleasant expression. The native women
wear nothing but a thin belt with a small piece of cloth attached but
they are covered with brass rings, and the principle wife of an
important chief here was wearing a necklet of solid brass which must
have weighed thirty or forty pounds. This was fixed on and had to be
worn night and day.

[Illustration: THE FARM AT EALA.]

In spite however, of clever doctors, the men do not live to be much over
forty years of age. Perhaps they have too many wives for there are far