Page:West African Studies.djvu/544

 trained troops, so know something about a soldier's work, and for choice I would prefer a week's similar work in Europe to two hours' West African bush and swamp fighting, with its aids, fever and dysentery.

Before I quit Benin I want to mention one thing more about Ju-Ju. When the attack was made on Benin city, the first day's march had scarcely begun when two white men were killed and buried. After the column passed on, the natives came and dug the bodies up, cut their heads and hands off, and carried them up to Benin city to the Ju-Ju priests, who showed them to the king to prove to him that his Ju-Ju, managed by them, was greater than the white man's; in fact, the king, I am told, was being shown these heads and hands at the moment when the first rockets fell in Benin city. Those rockets proved to him the contrary, and he left the city quicker than he had ever done in his life before.

To point out to my readers how all the natives of the Delta believed in the power of the Benin Ju-Ju, I must tell you none of them believed the English had really captured the King until he was taken round and shown to them, the belief being that, on the approach of danger, he would be able to change himself into a bird and thus fly away and escape.

Brass River is then the first river we have to deal with on the Niger Coast Protectorate, to the eastward of the Royal Niger Company's boundary.

The inhabitants of Brass call their country Nimbé and themselves Nimbé nungos, the latter word meaning people.