beast by its muzzle with his left hand, and dexterously tossing its body under his left arm, forced its head back towards his left shoulder until the neck of the beast formed an arc, his assistant handing him at this moment a very sharp white-handled spear-pointed knife, which he drew across the animal's throat, almost severing its head from its body. Quick as lightning he dropped on one knee and held the bleeding animal over a receptacle, having the appearance of a large soup plate, fashioned in the clay of the ground immediately in front of the altar arrangement. In the centre of this plate was a hole down which the quickly coagulating blood slowly trickled; after the interval of what appeared to me minutes, but was in fact most likely less than a minute, the Ju-Ju man laid the lifeless body of the goat down with its neck over the opening in the plate, leaving it there to drain. At the moment of the sacrifice various gongs and old ship bells were struck by young men stationed near them for that purpose—a wrecked ship's bell being generally presented to the Ju-Ju house, though not as in the case of Ju-Ju goods by law prescribed. New Calabar people had been fairly well observant of this custom, and the wrecks numerous, judging from the number of ships' bells in the Ju-Ju house. At every movement of the Ju-Ju priest the king and chief would grunt out a noise very much resembling that auld Scotch word "ahum."
The Ju-Ju house had amongst its possessions several ill-shapen wooden idols, and scattered about the affair that represented an altar were various small idols looking very much like children's dolls; also several large elephant's tusks, and two or three very well carved ones, with the usual procession of coated and naked figures winding round them.
