12 
GOD'S BLACK DIAMONDS. 
port their customs, hoary with age, is one of the 
greatest duties and glories of an Efik man or 
woman. The estabHshment of the Girls* Training 
Institute faced this difficulty for quite a long time. 
The old women — the grannies'' as someone 
called them — were quite opposed to it and its 
object. This was their argument : the girls of to- 
day will be the women and mothers of to-morrow. 
If they learn book '' and follow mission fashions 
they will turn their backs upon the customs and 
fashions of their fathers. And that will never do. 
Held fast in the grip of ignorance, and therefore a 
prey to many needless fears, the bush-heathen are 
to be greatly pitied. Can you imagine what it 
means to believe that no one dies a natural death 
unless he is very old? It works out like this 
in the Oron country. When a young person dies 
they never think of blaming the fever or pneumonia 
or small-pox ; they hold that the disaster has come 
about through poison being placed in the food, or 
in the ground over which the deceased has walked, 
or else somebody has employed witchcraft, or the 
evil eye." To bottom the mischief and discover 
the guilty party, the services of the witch-doctor 
are sought, and suspicion, fear, cruel suffering, and 
death soon follow. The only way to banish super- 
stition and ignorance, and destroy the power of 
evil customs is to let in the light of knowledge — 
knowledge of the world in which we live, and 
knowledge of Jesus Christ, which makes folks wise 
unto salvation. And the best method to accom- 
plish this lies in training the black boys and girls 
in far-away Mangrove-land. 
