W. F. Daniell, Esq., on the Natives of Old Callebar. 319 



in which all country disputes are adjusted, and to which 

 every prisoner suspected of capital oifences is brought, to 

 undergo examination and judgment. If found guilty, they 

 are usually forced to swallow a deadly potion, made from the 

 poisonous seeds of an aquatic leguminous plant, which rapidly 

 destroys life. This poison is obtained by pounding the seeds 

 vand macerating them in water, which acquires a white milky 

 colour. The condemned person, after swallowing a certain 

 portion of the liquid, is ordered to walk about until its effects 

 become palpable. If, however, after the lapse of a definite 

 period, the accused should be so fortunate as to throw the 

 poison from off the stomach, he is considered as innocent, 

 and allowed to depart unmolested. In native parlance this 

 ordeal is designated as " chopping nut." Decapitation is 

 also practised, but not so much amongst criminals as the 

 former process, being more employed for the immolation of 

 the victims at the funeral obsequies of some great personage. 

 Drowning is sometimes resorted to as a substitute for the 

 first means of destroying life. The chiefs hold petty courts 

 for the punishment of their domestic slaves and retainers, 

 but their decision, in almost every case of life and death, is, 

 I believe, subject to the revision of the king, whose will is 

 supreme and despotic. Inhabitants of the neighbouring: 

 countries often bring minor difierences to these courts for 

 arbitration, the awards of which are generally correct and 

 satisfactory. A chief guilty of a capital crime, which comes 

 more immediately under the cognizance of the ruling powers, 

 is punished, more or less, by the deprivation of his slaves, or 

 put to death by proxy ; that is, one or two of his principal 

 household slaves suffer the penalties of the law in his place. 

 The most potent controlling influence, which fulfils all the pur- 

 poses of a natural code of laws, is a semi-political and religious 

 custom, known under the designation of Egbo. This peculiar 

 governing principle appears to be a compound of a kind of 

 freemasonry, and those fetish rites prevalent on the Gold 

 and Slave coasts. The Egbo is subdivided into various 

 grades, of which there are no less than eighteen or twenty ; 

 of these the highest and most aristocratic has been termed 

 Grand Egbo. All grades of Egbo have their own appropriate 



