One day at Efulen the body of a very large monkey, killed by Mr. Kerr or Dr. Good, hung suspended from the roof of our back porch. The expression of the monkey’s face was fearfully human. It did not look dead, but rather as if it had been very drunk the night before and was sleeping off the effects. I heard our two house-boys giggling and chuckling on the porch, and looking out I saw them standing in front of the monkey trying to look just like him, which they did with such startling success that I complimented them by telling them that either of them might exchange places with the monkey without Dr. Good ever knowing the difference. On one occasion a party of white men and native boys were travelling on a river launch for several days. Four of the white men occupied their spare time in playing a certain game with dominoes. One day when they had left the cabin, four native boys sat down in their places and taking the dominoes, began to imitate the white men. They were absolutely ignorant of the game, and did not know the white men’s language, and yet they presented the semblance of the whole performance, each boy impersonating an individual white man—his exclamations, manner, and general behaviour during the progress of the game, from the deal to the last trick and the noisy conclusion. This art of imitation is useful to the natives in hunting. For instance, a deer hunter in the forest will imitate the noise of two fighting bush-deer, and he will do it so well that any deer within hearing will come running to the spot. In reciting their numerous fables, in which animals are made to talk and act so as to teach lessons of prudence and goodness, the native will imitate the noise or the movements of each animal, and some of these stories one might almost follow without knowing the language. This talent is also useful to the native in preaching the Gospel, which they all do, great and small, old and young, as soon as they become Christians, and often long before. I talked one day to a group of Christian boys, or young men, on the words: “Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field,” applying the words obviously to the subtility of the Evil One in tempting us. Shortly afterwards, one of those young men, Ndong Koni (whose name I am likely to mention very frequently in the succeeding chapters) preached to a large audience a sermon on those words, which put mine to shame: