which has been translated into Bangala and gives a short address on the subject afterwards. He is evidently much in earnest and talks with that kind of spirit of conviction frequently to be noticed in street preachers. Several hymns are sung and then the people pass out, dropping their mitakos into the plate as they do so. In the afternoon, we walk round the village. Mr. Clarke notices a boy with a malformation of one knee and speaks to him. He then explains to me that this is another atrocity, for the boy said he had been shot by the soldiers of the State when an infant. An examination of the boy however, showed he was suffering from a kind of bony tumour. There are several chiefs in Ikoko and one of them also practises as a doctor. He has cleared a space about ten feet in diameter and enclosed it for a consulting room, while an inner chamber, still more closely surrounded, is the secret place where the infusions are made and the charms and fetishes consulted. Although many of the drugs used, are efficacious or not, according to the faith of the patient, as in civilised countries, yet the white people constantly tell of apparently wonderful cures by native doctors, and it is certain that the people at present prefer to be treated by those of their own colour. There is also an old lady in Ikoko, the widow of a chief, who is reported to be very clever as a healer. This old person has European features but has an unpleasant expression. The native women wear nothing but a thin belt with a small piece of cloth attached but they are covered with brass rings, and the principle wife of an important chief here was wearing a necklet of solid brass which must have weighed thirty or forty pounds. This was fixed on and had to be worn night and day. [Illustration: THE FARM AT EALA.] In spite however, of clever doctors, the men do not live to be much over forty years of age. Perhaps they have too many wives for there are far more old women than men. On the other hand, as there must be two or three women to each man, it is only natural to find more of the former at any given age. The infants are not weaned for three or four years and during that period the woman it is said refuses to lie with her husband. Another wife therefore, cohabits with the man while the first rears her child. Polygamy is thus a custom which the missionaries find very difficult to change. The State however, refuses to recognise more than one wife and many of the soldiers are legitimately married by the officials qualified to perform that office.