The story of this adventure is still told in Calabar, and if you ask Dan, one of Ma's children, about it, he will say, "Once, when Ma was travelling in a canoe, she was attacked by hippopotamuses, but when they looked inside the canoe and saw her, they all ran away!"
What Ma saw and heard made her all a-quiver to go into these strange lands, but she would not leave the Okoyong people until some one came to take her place. The Mission had no other lady to send, and so she could only watch and pray and wait.
Matters became worse. The Aros hated the white rule, and would not submit to it. They tried to prevent the Government opening up their country to order and justice and peace, and would not allow the officials to enter it; they blocked the river so that no white vessel, or native one either, could pass; they went on with their slave-hunting and cannibalism. At last the Government lost patience. "We must teach them a lesson," they said. So a warning went to all the missionaries along the banks of the river to come down to Calabar at once. Ma Slessor did not like the order. "Everything is peaceful in Okoyong," she said. "My people won't fight." The Government said they knew that, but her life was too precious to risk, and they sent a special steamer for her and the children.
When she came she found several companies of soldiers, with many quick-firing guns, already moving up the river. They landed in the Aro country, and marched through swamps and attacked the hosts of natives who had gathered to bar their way, and defeated them. Still, the bushmen would not give in, and the soldiers had many a weary time in the trackless forests. At Arochuku they went down the gorge to the juju house, at the door of which they found a white goat starving to death. Many human skulls and cooking-pots lying about told a gruesome tale. The place continued to be the scene of wicked ceremonies, and was at last blown up with dynamite.
Ma was sorry she had not gone to Iboland before the soldiers, because she felt that if she had done so she might have saved all the fighting and bloodshed. Now that a way had been blazed into the country, she was more than ever eager and impatient to go.
"The Gospel should have been the first to enter," she said; "but since the sword and gun are before us, we must follow at once."
So while carrying on the work at Akpap, she began to explore and look out for some place that would do for an outpost. One day she left Akpap, taking with her the slave-girl Mana, who now knew English and her Bible well, and a bright boy called Esien, and tramped to the Cross River, where she boarded a canoe and paddled slowly upstream. By and by she came to another smaller river on the west, which seemed to run far into the interior between Ibo and Ibibio, and there she landed on a beach at the foot of a hill. This was Itu, a famous place, for it was here that one of the greatest slave-markets in West Africa used to be held, and it was down this side river, the Enyong Creek, that the slaves were brought in canoes, to be sold and sent over the country, or shipped abroad to the West Indies or America.
"A good place to begin," Ma said; and she landed and climbed up the steep bank to the top, where she had a beautiful view over the shining river and the green land. "Oh, yes," she repeated, "a bonnie place to begin."
Once more she lived the gipsy life. She opened a school, made Mana and Esien the teachers, and started to build a church. The people, who had so long trembled in the shadow of slavery, were so pleased that they did all they could to help her, and the children of the village tumbled over one another in their eagerness to "learn book."