Page:West African Studies.djvu/630

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552
NATIVES OF THE NIGER COAST
app.

to-day, steeped in Ju-Juism, witchcraft, and their attendant horrors.

The Kwo people, whose country lies on both sides of the Kwo Ibo, and behind the Ibenos, are the tribe from whom were drawn the supplies of Kwo or Kwa slaves known under the name of the Mocoes in the West Indies.

OLD CALABAR.

I now come to the last river in the Niger Coast Protectorate, both banks of which belong to England, the next river being the Rio del Rey, of which England now only claims the right bank, Germany claiming the left and all the territory south to the river Campo, a territory almost as large as, if not equal to, the whole of the Niger Coast Protectorate, which ought to have been English, for was it not English by right of commercial conquest, if by no other, and for years had been looked upon by the commanders of foreign naval vessels as under English influence?

Owing to some one blundering, this nice slice of African territory was allowed to slip into the hands of the Germans, hence my account of the Oil Rivers ought to be called an account of the Oil Rivers reduced by Germany.

In speaking of the inhabitants of this river, I must also include the people who inhabit the lower part of the Cross River. This explanation would not have been necessary some few years ago, but I notice the more recent hydrographers make the Cross River the main river and the Old Calabar only a tributary of that river, which is, without doubt, the most correct.

The principal towns are Duke Town (where are to be found nowadays the headquarters of the Niger Coast