I have several times been thoroughly worsted in my discussion with native chiefs on this matter of witchcraft executions. In the early years of my missionary life, while resident on Corisco Island, I followed the practice of my predecessor, the Rev. J. L. Mackey, in the effort to prevent such executions, which were then (about 1863) common. We directed the native Christians to notify us of any death, and we would at once go to the village and endeavor to forestall the almost invariable witchcraft investigation. The headman, Kombenyamango, of an adjacent village, was a large, strong, influential, cruel man. There was so little about him to command my respect that I had shown him but slight deference. Having thus his _amour propre_ wounded, he was unfortunately not on very good terms with me. His aged mother had been failing in health for a long time, and finally had died. Her position, as mother of a chief, had given her much respect in native eyes. The concourse of mourners gathered from a distance was large. Feeling for her death was deep; threats of vengeance for her taking off were loud. I was soon informed that one of her female slaves had been seized under pure suspicion because of her proximity as the dead woman's servant. In her case as a means of finding whether or not she was guilty, there had been no ordeal test of drinking the mbundu poison. (On the Upper Guinea Coast it is sassa-wood; at Calabar, the Calabar bean; at the equator, the akazya leaf.) Under torture, being beaten and lacerated by thorn bushes, she had confessed herself guilty, was in chains, and was soon to be executed. On such occasions, on arriving at the village, there was often an effort on the part of the chief to deceive the missionary. The chief would either assert that he had had no intention of making a witchcraft investigation, or would consent now, in deference to his white friend the missionary, to abandon his intention, and would forbid any execution. But it would be revealed to us afterwards that at that very moment a victim was in chains in that very village, and had subsequently been secretly put to death.