In King Eyo's royal canoe she made the journey to the strange people. Leaving the paddlers, who were mortal enemies to the Okoyong tribe, at the water's edge, she made her way along the jungle trail to a village four miles inland. Here the people crowded about her greatly excited. They called her "Mother," and seemed pleased that she had come to them without fear. The chief, Edem, and his sister, Ma Eame, received her in a friendly fashion. Her courage, frankness, and ready understanding won favor from the beginning. "May I have ground for a schoolhouse and a home with you here?" she asked. "Will you have me stay as your friend and help you as I have helped the people of Calabar?" Eagerly they assented. It would be a fine thing to have a "White Mother" in their country. "Will you grant that the house I build shall be a place of refuge for those in distress--for those charged with witchcraft or threatened with death for any other cause? Will you promise that they shall be safe with me until we can consider together their case?" The people looked at the strange white woman wonderingly. Why should she ask this thing? What difference could it make to her? "All life is precious," she said simply, as if she had read their thoughts. "I am here to help you--to care for those who are sick or hurt, and I must be allowed to see that each one who is in any sort of trouble is treated fairly. Will you promise that my house shall be a place of refuge?" Again they gravely assented. So, greatly encouraged, she returned to Calabar to pack her goods and prepare to leave the old field for the new. All her friends gathered about her, loudly lamenting. She was surely going to her death, they said. Her fellow workers regarded her with wonder and pity. "Nothing can make any impression on the Okoyong save a consul and a British gunboat," they declared. But Mary Slessor was undaunted. She stowed her boxes and her little family of five small waifs away in the canoe as happily as if she were starting out on a pleasure trip. To a friend in Scotland, she wrote: I am going to a new tribe up-country, a fierce, cruel people, and every one tells me that they will kill me. But I don't fear any hurt--only to combat their savage customs will require courage and firmness on my part. The life in Okoyong did indeed require fortitude and faith. Remote from friends and helpers, in the midst of that most dreaded of all the African tribes, she patiently worked to lighten the darkness of the degraded people and make their lives happier and better. With her rare gift of intuition she at once felt that Ma Eame, the chief's sister, had a warm heart and a strong character.