ness of Sir Claude and Lady MacDonald I remained in Calabar River from January until May, collecting fish mainly through the kindness of Dr Whitindale, and insects through the kindness of Mr. Cooper, then in charge of the botanical station. Most of my time was spent puddling about the river and the forest round Dukę Town and Creek Town, but I made a point on this visit to Calabar of going up river to see Miss Slessor at Okyon, and she allowed me to stay with her, giving me invaluable help in the matter of fetish and some of the pleasantest days in my life. This very wonderful lady has been eighteen years in Calabar; for the last six or seven living entirely alone, as far as white folks go, in a clearing in the forest near to one of the principal villages of the Okyon district, and ruling as a veritable white chief over the entire Okyon district. Her great abilities, both physical and intellectual, have given her among the savage tribe an unique position, and won her, from white and black who know her, a profound esteem. Her knowledge of the native, his language, his ways of thought, his diseases, his difficulties, and all that is his, is extraordinary, and the amount of good she has done, no man can fully estimate. Okyon, when she went there alone—living in the native houses while she built, with the assistance of the natives, her present house—was a district regarded with fear by the Duke and Creek Town natives, and practically unknown to Europeans. It was given, as most of the surrounding districts still are, to killing at funerals, ordeal by poison, and perpetual internecine wars. Many of these evil customs she has stamped out, and Okyon rarely gives trouble to its nominal rulers, the Consuls in Old Calabar, and trade passes freely through it down to the sea-ports.
This instance of what one white can do would give many important lessons in West Coast administration and development. Only the sort of man Miss Slessor represents is rare. There are but few who have the same power of resisting the malarial climate, and of acquiring the language, and an insight into the negro mind, so perhaps after all it is no great wonder that Miss Slessor stands alone, as she certainly does.
