take your passage in the ship commanded by Captain Willie Thompson, R.N.R.
But this is digressing. I must get back to New Calabar and tell you what I saw at my introduction to Ju-Juism under the auspices of dear old King Amachree. The occasion was the swearing Ju-Ju with some people in the interior, with whom they had only lately opened up commercial relations, and they wanted them to swear they would trade with no other people but them. The deputation, who represented the market people, looked as wild a lot as one could wish to see, and, as far as I could make out, the ceremony I was watching was a kind of preliminary canter to a more impressive, and most likely more diabolical one to be carried out at some future date in the stranger folks' country. On this occasion the officiating Ju-Ju priest did not seem to address any of his words to the strangers, who looked on with a certain amount of fear depicted in their countenance.
The Ju-Ju priest was clothed (?) in a superb dark-coloured and greasy-looking rag about his loins, barely sufficient to satisfy the easiest going of European Lord Chamberlains; but from the expressive grunts of satisfaction which greeted his appearance in the Ju-Ju house, I was led to suppose his dress was quite correct and proper for the occasion. His head was shaved on the right side, and all down his right side and leg he had been dusted over with some greyish-white native chalk. He said a few words in an undertone to one of his assistants, who went out of sight for a moment or so and quickly returned with a very fine almost milk-white goat, the poor beast seeming to anticipate its fate from its fearfully loud bleating. The Ju-Ju priest seized the poor
