the worship of the iguana, an immense lizard, which from time immemorial had been the Bonny man's titular guardian angel. They not only got them to give up worshipping this saurian, but also, to mark a new departure in their religious ideas, the missionaries prevailed upon the people to organise a general iguana hunt; so, following the old saying of "the better the day, the better the deed," one Easter Sunday, about the year 1883 or 1884, or about twenty-two years after the establishment of the mission, the bells of the mission church rang out the signal for the wholesale slaughter of these reptiles. To such an extent and with such good will did the people work that day, that by evening time not one was left alive in the town. That day it was everybody's job to kill these reptiles, but it was nobody's job to clear away the dead bodies, there being no County Council in Bonny to see to the scavenger work after this animal St. Bartholomew; the consequence was the stench was so great from the decaying bodies that every European predicted a general sickness would be the natural outcome of it all; but no such unlucky event happened, and the natives did not seem to notice the extra strong perfume very much—one of them observing, to a growl about it by a white man, that "it be all same them trade beef you sell we people for chop."
The Bonny men until late years were steeped in all the most vile practices of Ju-Juism—sacrificing human beings to their various Ju-Jus, and eating all their prisoners captured in war, certain of their Ju-Ju practices demanding an annual human sacrifice. If at this time they happened to be at peace with their neighbours, and consequently without any prisoner to be sacrificed, the Ju-Ju men would disguise themselves in some fantastic dress
