Page:The land of fetish.pdf/129

 He has lately been released from the durance vile in which his subjects had been keeping him on account of some misdemeanour, but is still under a cloud, as his peculiarities are so well known, and he is treated with but scant ceremony by the natives and traders of Bonny river. As an instance of how little African royalty is in consonance with European, I may mention that Pepple's eldest son was, until very recently, post-master at Accra with a salary of some 50l. a year.

Bonny-town is the worst and dirtiest to be found on the West Coast of Africa; the houses are small "wattle and daub" structures, and there are no streets even of the poor description that are found in towns on the Gold Coast. The huts are scattered about in indescribable confusion amongst pools of mud, heaps of refuse, and cess-pits; and one cannot walk more than a few hundred yards in any given direction without finding a bar to further progress in the shape of a muddy creek. The Bonny traders do not often honour the town with their presence, nor is there any inducement for them to do so. The Ju-ju house is the only "sight" in Bonny. It is a mud hut in a ruinous condition, in which, piled up in wattle racks, are innumerable human skulls, the remains of persons who have been sacrificed to the