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OLD CALABAR
557

this mission should be mentioned the Rev. Mr. Anderson, who lived to the advanced age of between eighty and ninety years, greatly respected by both the European and native population. Amongst the lady missionaries the name of Miss Slessor stands out very prominently, and, considering the task she has set herself, viz., the saving of twin children and protection of their mothers, her success has been marvellous, for the Calabarese is, like his neighbours, still a great believer in the custom that says twin children are not to be allowed to live. This lady has passed about twenty years in Old Calabar, a greater part of the last ten years all alone at Okÿon, a district which the people of Duke Town and the surrounding towns preferred not to visit, if they could manage any business they had with the people of Okÿon without going amongst them. Many of these old customs will now be much more quickly stamped out than in the past, owing to the fact that it is in the power of the Consul-General to punish the natives severely who practise them. The preaching and exhortation of the missionaries to the people in the past was met by the very powerful argument, in a native's mind, that "it was a custom his father had kept from time immemorial, and he did not see why he should not continue it," the Ju-Ju priests being clever enough to point out to the natives that, though the missionaries preached against Ju-Juism, they could not punish its votaries. But that is all changed now, and even the Ju-Ju priests begin to feel that the power of the Consul-General is much greater than that of their grinning idols and trickery.

Though these people have been in communication with Europeans for at least two centuries, and under British influence for upwards of sixty years, and a mission has