Protectorate, the Presbyterian Mission, and the principal trading factories of the Europeans), Henshaw Town, Creek and Town; besides these, the various kings and chiefs have numberless small towns and villages in the environs. In the lower part of the Cross river are many fishing villages, the inhabitants of which are looked upon as Old Calabar people, and owing to the latter being the dominant race they have to-day lost, or very nearly so, any trace of their forefathers, who I believe to have been Kwos with a strong strain of Andoni blood.
These villages did, in days anterior to the advent of the European traders, an immense business with the interior in dried shrimps, the latter being used by the natives, not only as a flavouring to their stews and ragouts, but as a substitute for the all necessary salt.
The original inhabitants of the district now occupied by the Old Calabar people were the Akpas, whom the Calabarese drove out, and to a great extent afterwards absorbed. This immigration of the Calabarese is said to have taken place very little over one hundred and fifty years ago. Originally coming from the upper Ibibio district of the Cross River, they belong to the Efik race, and speak that language, though nowadays, owing to numerous intermarriages with Cameroon natives and the great number of slaves bought from the Cameroons district, they are of very mixed blood. Most of the kings and chiefs of Old Calabar owe their rank and position to direct descent, some of them being of ancient lineage, a fact of which they are very proud. In this respect they differ in a great measure from their neighbours in Bonny and Opobo, where, oftener than otherwise, the succession falls to the most influential man in the House, slave or free-born.
