ABSTRACT
For some reason or other Ibibio women seem to be, on the whole, of higher type than the male portion of the community. The men are fairly industrious as regards occupations which custom has decreed should fall to their share; such, for instance, as cutting bush for the new season’s farms, tending palm trees, and collecting nuts and kernels. To the feminine portion of the community, as has already been mentioned, is owed the one Ibibio fine art—that of pottery. A particularly diminutive specimen ran up to the reader one evening on their arrival at the seashore town of Ibeno. Ibibios are perhaps unusually bloodthirsty, for crimes of violence were so frequent that for months after their arrival scarcely a day passed without a man or woman running in to claim the protection of the District Commissioner—often with hideous gun or machet wounds to show in plea.
