One day Mary thought of a new plan she wanted to try out.  She had been in the jungle for five years.  She was due to get a year’s vacation at home in Scotland.  Instead of this she asked for something else.  She wrote to the Mission Board: 

I would like to have leave from the mission station at Akpap for six months.  This time I would spend traveling between Okoyong and Amasu.  I would visit many places which I do not have time to visit now.  Already I have seen a church and a mission house built at Itu, and a school and a couple of rooms at Amasu.  I have visited several towns at Enyong and have found good enough places to stay.

I shall find my own canoe and crew.  I shall stay at any one place just as long as I think wise.  The members of my family [she meant the twins and slave children and other unwanted children she had adopted] shall help in teaching the beginners in the schools.

I plan to live at Itu as my headquarters.  I will look after the small schools I have started at Idot and Eki.  I will visit and work for Jesus in the towns on both sides of Enyong creek all the way to Amasu.  I will live there for a while or travel among the Aros telling them of Jesus.  Then I will come back by easy stages to Itu and home.

Please send an assistant to help Miss Wright at Akpap, so I will be free to do this new work in the jungle.  I would like Miss Wright to help me with some work among the cannibals, in some places, so that I will have more time for pioneer work in the places farther away.

Itu should be our main station.  We can reach the various tribes best from it.  It is the gateway to the Aros and the Ibibios and near many other tribes.  That is why it became a slave market.  It could be reached so easily.  It is only a day’s journey from the seaport of the ocean steamers, having waterway all the year round and a good beach front.  Itu is a natural place for our upriver and downriver work to come together.

Mary was now fifty-six years old.  She had suffered much from sickness and from the lack of many things.  Now she wanted to go on a “gypsying tour of the jungle,” as she called it.  This was hard and difficult work.  There were many dangers from wild animals and wild people.  These tribes she wanted to visit did not know anything about the Saviour, or God’s Word, but they did know how to do many wicked things like killing and eating people.  Many a younger and stronger person than Mary would be afraid to tackle the job she had planned to do.  Mary was not afraid.  God had given her the chance to reach the wild cannibals.  She was willing to die trying to bring the Gospel to them.

“I am willing to go anywhere,” said Mary, “provided it be forward among the cannibals.”

Mary anxiously waited for the answer from the Mission Board giving her permission to work for six months in the cannibal country.  The answer did not come and did not come.  At last she decided to go on a short trip through that country to encourage the black workers she had sent there.  She went to see the Wilkies and Miss Wright.