“You old scoundrel, it’s ’long pig’:” and again he rushed with exceeding swiftness to look at the prospect out of the window.
When he had recovered, he took his hat and stick sorrowfully, and staggered down the steps. Just as he was stepping into the boat, one of Oko Jumbo’s slaves came running up with the identical black dish that had been the cause of all this woe. The enraged legislator brandished his stick and said:--
“What do you want? What do you mean by bringing that here?”
Just as the boy was going he thought he might as well add a little to his stock of information, and added:--
“I suppose that’s one of Ja Ja’s babies, eh?”
A serene smile broke out over the interesting countenance of the youth as he replied:--
“Piccin? This no piccin chop. No war palaver live now. Him Guana.”
Old Calabar--Duke Town--Capital Punishments--Moistening the Ancestral Clay--A Surgeon’s Liabilities--Man-eaters--A Mongrel Consul--Curious Judgments.
From Bonny I went on to the Old Calabar river, called by the natives Kalaba and Oróne, which, though always included with the outfalls of the Niger under the general title of Oil Rivers, is an entirely distinct stream. After twenty hours’ steaming from Bonny we entered the estuary of the river, and, crossing the bar, ascended the stream, which, in comparison with the wide reach of Bonny river, seemed small and contracted, though it is of fair size, and very deep. About ten miles from the bar we passed Parrot Island, an isle in the centre of the river, covered with a dense growth of mangrove trees, and entered upon a narrower channel to the right of the island. The banks were thickly wooded, and it was a strange sight to see a large steamer pursuing its way in the midst of a dense forest, and within a stone’s throw of the bank. The far-spreading branches brushed the yards of the ship, and the alligators, disturbed by the stroke of the propeller, lazily crawled out of the black mud in which they had been wallowing. As at this part of the stream the navigable channel follows very closely the eastern bank, it is no uncommon occurrence for sailing-ships ascending and descending to get their rigging fouled with the overhanging branches.
Thirty miles from the entrance of the river we anchored off Duke-town, where lie the hulks of the traders: the stream here is half-a-mile in breadth, and there is sufficient draught of water for vessels of 2,000 tons.