according to the seasons. After a very rough and boisterous rainy season, the price may be two shillings and six-pence, or its equivalent, for four hundred of these mats, each mat being a little over two feet in length, but falling in bad times to two shillings and sixpence for five to six hundred. A roof made with these mats threefold thick will last for three years.
These people call themselves Calabar men simply because they live within the influence of the Calabarese. In the upper part of these small rivers, about a day's journey by canoe from the mouth of St. Bartholomew, is the chief town of a small tribe of people called the Billa tribe, connected by marriage with the Bonny men, several of the kings of Bonny having married Billa women. These people are producers in a small way of palm-oil, and though they are located so close to the New Calabar people, prefer to sell their produce to the Bonny men, who send their canoes over to the Billa country to fetch the oil, the latter people not having canoes large enough for carrying the large puncheons which the Bonny men send over to collect their produce in.
The New Calabar men are now split up into three towns called Bugama, where the king lives; Abonema, of which Bob Manuel is the principal chief; and Backana, where the Barboy House reside. Besides they have numerous small towns scattered about in the network of creeks connecting the Calabar River with the Sombrero River. Previous to 1880 these people all dwelt together in one large town on the right bank of the Calabar River, nearly opposite to where the creek, now called the Cawthorne Channel,[1] branches off from the main river.
- ↑ As an evidence of how secret the natives of these parts have always tried to keep, and have to a great extent kept, the knowledge of the
