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Updated: June 28, 2025
If the complaint be just, the Egbo is sent to the offending party to warn him of his delinquency, and to demand reparation, after which announcement no one dares move out of the house inhabited by the culprit, until the affair is settled, and if it be not soon arranged, the house is pulled down about their ears, in which case the loss of a few heads frequently follows.
Egbo again in action to-day, having been sent from Old Calabar to Robin's Town, a distance of three miles, to recover a debt for the Duke. Friday, 21. Old Calabar being yesterday, this was Duke's Sunday; but neither of these holidays were kept with the usual festivity, in consequence of the prescribed time of the mourning for the Prince, not having yet expired.
The Dukduk of the Bismarck Archipelago, the Egbo of Old Calabar, and the Ogboni of Yoruba, to take prominent examples, are police associations that have managed to get complete control of their respective communities and have naturally become instruments of oppression and fraud.
The sums paid for the different titles of Egbo are divided among the Yampai only, who are not confined to a single share, for a Yampai may have his title multiplied as often as he chooses to purchase additional shares, which entitles the person so purchasing to a corresponding number of portions in the profits arising out of the establishment.
She, however, compromised by consenting to take two armed attendants with lanterns, and to call at a chief's place some eight miles distant, and secure a freeman to beat the Egbo drum before her, thus letting the people in the fighting area know that a free protected person was coming. She reached their village about midnight.
All the women and children and all the men without arms rushed frantically about. Mothers clutched their babies, wives and slaves seized what belongings they could carry, children screamed and held on to the first person they met. They had heard sounds that heralded the advance of the dreaded Egbo. Then, by a common impulse, all rushed for the protection of the white woman's yard.
She seized hold of one fellow and locked him in her yard, and the act brought quiet. The mob turned out to be Egbo from a far-off town, come to sue for a debt due by a widow, who had already given up everything to liquidate it. She knew the people, had been kind to them, and had induced them to trade with Calabar.
In order to escape heavy punishment the woman will accuse some man of having hustled against her, or sat down on a bench beside her, and so on, and the accused man has to pay up. If he does not, in the Calabar district, Egbo will come and "eat the adultery," and there won't be much of that man's earthly goods left.
The Mumbo-Jumbo of the Mandengas; the Semo of the Susus; the Tassau or "Purrah-devil" of the Mendis; the Egugun of the Egbas; the Egbo of the Duallas; and the Mwetye and Ukukwe of the Bakele, is represented in Pongo-land by the Nda, which is an order of the young men.
Some black gentlemen came on board to-day to barter for bullocks. The brig James, from Liverpool, arrived this afternoon. Picked up floating about the harbour, the long-boat of a French slaver, that had been taken while at anchor here, by a French man-of-war brig. Ther. at 1 P.M. 93°. F. in the shade. Wednesday, 19. We saw from the vessel to-day, that Egbo was running about the town.
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