THE TRAFFIC IN STRONG DRINK. 555 



amongst them. Those who survived joyfully proclaimed themselves pure. 

 They were thus destroying themselves, and in some places mounds of clay 

 only remain to show where hamlets once stood. The gospel may yet be in 

 time to save them; but they sometimes resent the interference of our two 

 native agents, Efium Otu and Eyo Ekanem, to prevent the administration 

 of the ordeal ; and having all faith in their dark superstitions, accuse us of 

 shielding murderers in the perpetration of their secret deeds. We trust that 

 ere long their eyes will be opened to see that these superstitions are their 

 destruction and to receive in the gospel light and life, temporal and eternal. 



" But these native superstitions are not the only means by which the 

 kingdom of Satan is upheld, and the evangelistic efforts of the Church 

 opposed. The flood of strong drink poured upon the coast by our traders 

 builds a wall of ' triple granite' in defence of that kingdom, and a formidable 

 barrier in the way of the spread of the power of Christ. Now that, hap- 

 pily, the slave-trade is extinct on the West Coast — a great fact, which I think 

 has not been sufficiently recognised, so that Grod may have the praise which 

 is His due — European commerce should be only a blessing to the poor tribes. 

 As it is, it would be well for them that they never saw a European ship. A 

 great part of their industry is exchanged for that which is their destruction, 

 soul and body, and which our merchants, if they were wise, must see will be 

 a preventive to the advancement of the tribe in commercial prosperity as in 

 everything else which is good. This traffic in the ' fire-water,' while it ren- 

 ders missionary operations doubly necessary, doubles their difficulty, and 

 consequently their expense in money and life. When will Christian men lay 

 to heart their conduct in this matter ? and when will the Church affix her 

 stigma to such merchandise, which, as much as the heathenism of the natives, 

 stands in the way of the successful accomplishment of her great work in the 

 world? 



" The fact that the people among whom we labour are not homogeneous 

 as to nationality, is another circumstance which impedes the realisation of the 

 immediate results so much desired. Our population is made up of the repre- 

 sentatives of about thirteen different tribes, the Calabar people proper being 

 a minority in the land. These being constantly brought in from the interior, 

 bring with them their different tongues, their maxims, superstitions, and their 

 tribal antagonism, and cannot be operated on as one people. In our Creek 

 Town church, nine different tribes have representatives, and the tribe most 

 numerously represented in our little Christian community is that not of Cala- 

 bar, but Mburukom, the locality of which, in the heart of the continent, we 

 do not yet know. But this circumstance, which in the meantime delays the 

 much-wished-for success, will, we trust, eventually be, by the divine blessing, 

 made conducive to the more extensive and rapid diffusion of the gospel in the 

 unknown interior behind us. Such is the happy experience of the older 



