ABSTRACT
WE found the factory at New Benin very much the same as others we had seen before-the inevitable whitewashed oil-sheds, shouting Krooboys, swarming canoes, and verandahed residence. One might walk some 60 yards in two directions among the wooden buildings, and then had to stop suddenly on the brink of a bubbling quagmire, or the edge of the swirling tide. All day the steamer's gangways were crowded with big blue-tattooed Jakkeries, their chests and foreheads covered with what appeared to be rows of azure beads, though how the flesh is thus raised no European knows, and the native will not explain. They had come there to chaffer with the crew over parrots, baby alligators, and snakes in biscuit-tins-all of which are bought up at once by naturalists at home, as well as beautifully carved Benin paddles, hewn out of a hard wood which is sometimes as white and smoothgrained as ivory. There is a wealth of splendid
timber on many of the drier inland tracts, which will some day bring wealth to the man who can get it out.
