The name of Duke-town is derived from a native family of high rank which has adopted the European patronymic of Duke, and two principal members of which, Prince Duke and Henshaw Duke, are among the leading chiefs of the place. As the possession of Armstrong guns and munitions of war is considered a sign of wealth and authority in Bonny, so here a man’s status is fixed by the style of house he inhabits. This hobby is carried to such a length that the chiefs have wooden houses sent out to them from England and Germany, and keep European carpenters in their pay to erect them and keep them in repair. Some of these houses bristle with turrets, porticoes, verandahs, and bow-windows, and the chief whose residence has the largest number of these appendages is the one who makes the greatest show of wealth and influence.
Although in this respect the natives of Old Calabar seem more amenable to civilising influences than those of Bonny, there is not equal superiority displayed in their customs, except in the absence of the practice of cannibalism. Their treatment of criminals, for instance, is marked by great cruelty. When a native is detected in the commission of any serious offence, such as murder or theft, he is gagged, laid across an upturned canoe, his back broken by blows from heavy clubs, and his body thrown into the river. Sometimes they vary their modus operandi, and, after gagging the culprit, they truss him like a fowl, and fastening him to stakes driven into the mud at low water leave him to be drowned or devoured by alligators.
A curious local custom is that called “Feeding the Dead.” When they bury their dead, the relatives, before the earth is filled into the grave, place a tube, formed of bamboo, or pithy wood with the pith extracted, and sufficiently long to protrude from the earth heaped up over the body, into the mouth of the deceased; and down this they pour, from time to time, palm wine, water, palm oil, &c. They appear to imagine that dead men do not require solid food at all, and, as they only pour the liquids down two or three times a month, are not very thirsty souls. They believe that after death the deceased suffers from the same bodily ailments as he did in life, and sometimes very filial natives will go to the doctor of a steamer, and simulate the complaint from which the paternal or maternal ancestor suffered, in order that they may obtain the requisite medicine to pour down the grave. One day a lad, son of a late chief, came to the resident doctor of the river and said:—
“Doctor, my foot sick. Gimme some med’cine.”
“What’s the matter with it?” inquired the doctor.
“Him swell up—fit to burst—can’t walk no more.”
The Galen of the river examined the foot, and, finding it perfectly sound and healthy, and not swollen in the least, assumed an enraged aspect, and demanded fiercely—
“What d’you mean by telling me these lies?”
“Please, master, not my foot sick, my fader foot sick.”