54 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



In this service, in which they are known by such nicknames 

 as " Bottle-of-Beer," " Mashed-Potatoes," " Bubble-and-Squeak," 

 " Pipe-of-Tobacco," and the like, their word may always be 

 depended upon. But it is to be feared that this loyalty, which 

 with them is a strict matter of business, has earned for them 

 a reputation for other virtues to which they have little claim. 

 Despite the many years that they have been in the closest contact 

 with the missionaries and traders, they are still at heart the same 

 brutal savages as ever. After each voyage they return to the 

 native village to spend all their gains and pilferings in drunken 

 orgies, and relapse generally into sheer barbarism till the next 

 steamer rounds the neighbouring headland. " It is not a 

 comfortable reflection," writes Bishop Ingham, whose testimony 

 will not be suspected of bias, " as we look at this mob on our 

 decks, that, if the ship chance to strike on a sunken rock and 

 become unmanageable, they would rise to a man, and seize all 

 they could lay hands on, cut the very rings off our fingers if they 

 could get them in no other way, and generally loot the ship. 

 Little has been done to Christianise these interesting, hard- 

 working, cheerful, but ignorant and greedy people, who have so 

 long hung on the skirts of civilisation 1 ." 



The case is mentioned of a gang about to land at their own 

 village, one member of which is ailing. So they tell the captain- 

 "We no want that man; he go die." As however they want his 

 effects and cannot have them without the man himself, they agree 

 to take him ashore. But no sooner is the ship at a safe distance, 

 than they take their moribund kinsman by the head and feet, 

 and fling him overboard 2 . And so is dissipated the mirage that 

 has hitherto hung round the reputation of the Kruboy for half 

 the virtues under heaven. 



But the very worst "sweepings of the Sudanese plateau" seem 



The u er to nave gathered along the Upper Guinea Coast, 



Guinea occupied by the already mentioned Ts/ii t Ewe, and 



Peoples. . . 



Yoruba groups. 1 hey constitute three branches of 

 one linguistic, and probably also of one ethnical family, of which, 



1 Sierra Leone after a Hundred Years, p. 280. 



2 Op. dt. p. 281. 



