Ja-Ja is a most fanatical fetich-man, and signs of his paganism were to be seen at every few steps in the numerous ju-jus on our way. These ju-jus may, and do, assume any shape, and the most unlikely objects may be made sacred by their dedication, although no information is obtainable with regard to the exact rites practised or the supposed uses of the ju-jus. Idols in the usually accepted sense of the word they certainly are not, but rather things set apart for the worship of unseen spirits, or dedicated to the honour of a certain supposed god. A very common ju-ju, and, as it happened, the first one that met our eyes in Opobó, is a white hen cruelly nailed up alive to the top of a pole and left to starve and flutter to death. Then, in succession, we saw a grotesque human figure of yellow clay surmounted by an ox-skull, and covered with a penthouse roof of thatch; a miscellaneous collection of bones in a suspended grass cradle; a conical mound of yellow clay daubed and decorated with colour, and stuck all over with cocks’ feathers; a Bass’s beer-bottle on the top of a white pole; and so on _ad infinitum_. The great ju-ju house itself is much smaller than the celebrated building of human skulls at Bonny, and is a conical mud building with a high thatch roof, surmounted by an ox-skull, and lined with human skulls in the usual artistic, West African fashion. Wading up to our ankles in mud through the rank dense vegetation, and passing a primitive forge, where four swart negroes were making nails on a stone anvil with a stone hammer, their forge bellows being two sheepskins worked alternately by a man with two short sticks, as if he were playing on a pair of kettledrums—such a bellows and forge, in fact, as you may see any day on the Egyptian hieroglyphics—we caught sight of King Ja-Ja coming to meet us. A brilliant-coloured umbrella was held over his head by an attendant, and, as usual with African chiefs, he was followed by quite a crowd of evil-looking rapscallions of all ages and in all states of undress, carrying a perfect museum of obsolete arms, the staff of state, like a beadle’s mace, and other paraphernalia. Ja-Ja is a fine-looking old savage, as black as polished ebony, with hair like silver, and was in full dress to receive us—a red flannel shirt, worn as usual with the tails loose, embroidered most elaborately with the imperial French arms, and plentifully besprinkled with _N_s and _E_s, the Napoleonic bees, and other emblems of a bygone dynasty in France. This was the king’s only garment, except the usual bandana loincloth of two uncut handkerchiefs.