58 
MISSIONARY LIFE 
If the offending town refuses to pay, or to make 
satisfaction to the others, they make war upon it, 
and if victorious, sell the prisoners for slaves. 
The most trifling breach, of law is sometimes 
made a cause for war upon a weak town for the 
sake of the proflts accruing from the sale of the 
prisoners. The Africans, like enlightened people, 
prefer to make war upon the weak. 
Head-men also enact such laws as they think 
necessary for the government of their own people. 
These they repeal or alter as circumstances seem 
to require, or so as to bring the greatest revenue 
into their own coffers. Many of their laws bear 
the impress of injustice and cruelty, and are made 
with a view of extorting money, or its equivalent, 
from the common people. 
At Mo-Colong, when war was in progress there 
a few years since, a law was passed that no one 
should carry a whole bunch of bananas or plan- 
tains into the town at once. If any attempted to 
do so, others had a right to take all from the own- 
er and divide it among themselves. The scarcity 
of provisions was the alleged reason for the pas- 
sage of such a law. 
There is also what might be called the higher 
or supreme law, which is made by a secret society 
called Furrow, or Devil-Bush Society. Laws 
made by this society, coming in collision with 
