they existed in unbroken isolation for ages. It was not until the
fifteenth century that the explorations of the Portuguese opened up the
coast. Then, to the horrors of the internal slave-trade was added the
horror of the traffic for the markets of the West Indies and America.
Calabar provided the slavers with their richest freight, the lands
behind were decimated and desolated, and scenes of tragedy and
suffering unspeakable were enacted on land and sea. Yet for 400 years
Europeans never penetrated more than a few miles inland. Away in the
far interior of the continent great kingdoms were known to exist, but
all the vast coastal region was a mystery of rivers, swamps, and
forests inhabited by savage negroes and wild beasts.

It is not surprising that when the missionaries arrived in Calabar they
found the natives to have been demoralised and degraded by the long
period of lawlessness and rapine through which they had passed. They
characterised them in a way that was appalling: many seemed indeed to
have difficulty in selecting words expressive enough for their purpose.
"Bloody," "savage," "crafty," "cruel," "treacherous," "sensual,"
"devilish," "thievish," "cannibals," "fetish-worshippers," "murderers,"
were a few of the epithets applied to them by men accustomed to observe
closely and to weigh their words.

Not an attractive people to work amongst. Neither must the dwellers of
the earth have appeared to Christ when He looked down from heaven ere
He took His place in their midst. And Mary Slessor shrank from nothing
which she thought her Master would have done: she rather welcomed the
hardest tasks, and considered it an honour and privilege to be given
them to do. She was not blind to the conditions at home. Often when at
the Mission she realised how great was the need of the slums, with
their problems of poverty and irreligion and misery. But the people