"THREE-A-PENNY" KINGS

Evening Star, Issue 15480, 30 April 1914, Page 6

"THREE-A-PENNY" KINGS

Captain Nugent, who commanded tha British section of" the Anglo-German Demarcation Commission, has been telling in London some remarkable tales tho people who inhabit the Nigeria-Cameroons country. Among the many thousands of natives who watched the work of the Commission with the keenest, interest were " kings, three a penny," and a tribe who, in physiognomy and activity, resembled nothing so much as apes. " Each king generally brought us a fowl or a basket of limes, but no ' king' forgot his emblem of office. Each carried a long stick, surmounted by a brass crown. There were first, second, and third-class kings, and the size of their crowns varied accordingly." Among numerous " jujus" found in the deserted huts of the Zunipen, small, repulsive-looking cannibals, was a grotesque mask which meant instant death to the woman who saw it. When the community ran short of meat all that the local witch-doctor did was to don the mask and run about the hills until he met a likelylooking victim, who was there and then seized, killed, and eaten.