man required to possess wives and children and slaves--in the abundance
of these lay his power. But if, through incompetence or sickness or
misfortune, he failed he was regarded as the lawful prey of the chief
nearest him. To weaken the House of a neighbour was as clear a duty as
to strengthen one's own. Oppression and outrage were of common
occurrence. So suspicious were they even of each other that the chiefs
and their retainers lived in isolated clearings with armed scouts
constantly on the watch on all the pathways, and they ate and worked
with their weapons ready to their hands. Even Egbo law with all its
power was often resisted by the slaves and women regardless of the
consequences. No free Egbo man would submit to be dictated to by the
Egbo drum sent by another. A fine might be imposed, but he would sit
unsubdued and sullen, and then obtain his revenge by seizing or
murdering some passing victim. But all combined in a common enmity
against other tribes, and the region was enclosed with a fence of
terrorism as impenetrable as a ring of steel. The Calabar people were
hated because of the favoured position they enjoyed on the coast, and
their wealth and power; and a state of chronic war existed with them.
Each sought to outrival the other in the number of heads captured or
the number of slaves stolen or harboured, and naturally there was no
end to the fighting. All efforts to bring them together in the
interests of trade had been in vain. Even British authority was defied,
and messages from the Consul were ignored or treated with contempt.

They had their own idea of justice and judicial methods, and trials by
ordeal formed the test of innocence or guilt, the two commonest being
by burning oil and poison. In the one case a pot was filled with palm
oil which was brought to the boil. The stuff was poured over the hands
of the prisoner, and if the skin became blistered he was adjudged to be
guilty and punished. In the other case the esere bean--the product of a