On one occasion in 1861 the Rev. William Clemens took a young Benga man from Corisco Island to locate him as evangelist in the bounds of a mainland heathen tribe where there was some doubt as to the young man's safety. The village chief, though a heathen and entirely uninterested in the religious aspect of the case, was alive to the fact that the presence among his people of this young protégé of the white man would increase his tribal importance, and that his people themselves would derive a pecuniary benefit from even the small amount of money that would be spent on the evangelist's food. He therefore voluntarily offered to call an Ukuku meeting and have a law enacted that no one should machinate against the Benga's life by fetiches of any kind. Mr. Clemens declined the offer. If he accepted Ukuku's authority to defend him, he might some day be called on to submit to the same power as an authority to punish him. He wisely avoided an entangling alliance. He told the chief that he preferred to entrust his protégé to his care and to rely on his promise rather than on Ukuku's. This compliment put the chief on his mettle; the evangelist's protection became to him a case of _noblesse oblige_. The power of this society was often used as a boycott to compel white traders as to the prices of their goods, using intimidation and violence after the manner of trades unions in civilized countries. This was true all along the West Coast of Africa wherever no white government had been established. It ceased at Libreville, in the Gabun country, after the establishment of a French colony in 1843, with a white governor, a squad of soldiers, police, and a gunboat. Also at other trade centres such as Libreville, Ukuku early lost its position, for the population was too heterogeneous and there were too many diverse interests. At the large trading-houses were gathered native clerks and a staff of servants as cooks, personal attendants, boatmen, etc., representing a score of tribes from distant parts of the coast. Whatever obedience they gave to similar societies in their tribes, they did not feel bound by the local one, to which they were strangers; and they were disposed, under a community of trade interests with their employers, to disregard the society of the local tribe, to many of whom they felt themselves socially superior.