Anthropophagy, either as a necessity, a sentiment, or a superstition, is known to sundry, though by no means to all, the tribes dwelling between the Nun (Niger) and the Congo rivers; how much farther south it extends I cannot at present say.  On the Lower Niger, and its branch the Brass River, the people hardly take the trouble to conceal it.  On the Bonny and New Calabar, perhaps the most advanced of the so-called Oil Rivers, cannibalism, based upon a desire of revenge, and perhaps, its sentimental side, the object of imbibing the valour of an enemy slain in battle, has caused many scandals of late years.  The practice, on the other hand, is execrated by the Efiks of Old Calabar, who punish any attempts of the kind with extreme severity.  During 1862 the slaves of Creek-town attempted it, and were killed.  At Duke-town an Ibo woman also cut up a man, sun-dried the flesh, and sold it for monkey’s meat—­she took sanctuary at the mission house.  Yet it is in full vigour amongst their Ibo neighbours to the north-west, and the Duallas of the Camarones River also number it amongst their “country customs.”  The Mpongwe, as has been said, will not eat a chimpanzee; the Fan devour their dead enemies.

The Fan character has its ferocious side, or it would not be African:  prisoners are tortured with all the horrible barbarity of that human wild beast which is happily being extirpated, the North American Indian; and children may be seen greedily licking the blood from the ground.  It is a curious ethnological study, this peculiar development of destructiveness in the African brain.  Cruelty seems to be with him a necessary of life, and all his highest enjoyments are connected with causing pain and inflicting death.  His religious rites—­a strong contrast to those of the modern Hindoo—­are ever causelessly bloody.  Take as an instance, the Efik race, or people of Old Calabar, some 6,000 wretched remnants of a once-powerful tribe.  For 200 years they have had intercourse with Europeans, who, though slavers, would certainly neither enjoy nor encourage these profitless horrors; yet no savages show more brutality in torture, more frenzied delight in bloodshed, than they do.  A few of their pleasant practices are—­

The administration of Esere, or poison-bean;

“Egbo floggings” of the utmost severity, equalling the knout;

Substitution of an innocent pauper for a rich criminal;

Infanticide of twins; and

Vivisepulture.

And it must be remembered that this tribe has had the benefit of a resident mission for the last generation.  I can hardly believe this abnormal cruelty to be the mere result of uncivilization; it appears to me the effect of an arrested development, which leaves to the man all the ferocity of the carnivor, the unreflecting cruelty of the child.