Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/395

 The Nun branch is occupied by tribes of Akassa speech, which like the Nempé of Brass, the Bonny Okrika, and others, belong to the Eyo (Iju) family. Commercial activity promises to give the preponderance to the Nempé, into which the native pastors translate the English religious works. Like the Ibos, the Eyo tribes believe in a supreme god, who, however, is confounded with the heavens, revealing his power in the clouds, the rainbow, the fierce gale, the lightning flash, and the thunder-clap. But this god is too remote to be directly worshipped, and

is therefore approached through the mediation of secondary and more friendly deities, such as the iguana in the Bonny estuary, the shark in New Calabar, and elsewhere monkeys. Every two years the towns are purified, not by cleansing the houses or sweeping the streets, but by exorcising the foul fiends. The Jew-Jew-men, or wizards, play a preponderating part as medicine-men, priests, and prophets, as judges often condemning the accused to the ordeal of poison or of a plunge in some estuary infested by sharks and crocodiles. From them the Europeans learnt the potent properties of the esseré, or Calabar bean (Physostigma