Absolute Teetotalers Are Definite-Minded
People, And One Respects Them More Than One Does Those Who Do Not
Hold With
Teetotalism for themselves, but think it a good thing for
other people, and moreover it is of no use arguing
With them because
they say all alcohol is poison, and won't appreciate any evidence to
the contrary, so "palaver done set"; but a large majority of those
who attack, or believe in the rectitude of the attack on, the
African liquor traffic are not teetotalers and so should be capable
of forming a just opinion.
My personal knowledge of the district where most of the liquor goes
in - the Oil Rivers - has been gained in Duke Town, Old Calabar. I
have been there four separate times, and last year stayed there
continuously for some months during a period in which if Duke Town
had felt inclined to go on the bust, it certainly could have done
so; for the police and most of the Government officials were away at
Brass in consequence of the Akassa palaver, and those few who were
left behind and the white traders were down with an epidemic of
malarial typhoid. But Duke Town did nothing of the kind. I used to
be down in the heart of the town, at Eyambas market by Prince
Archebongs's house, night after night alone, watching the devil-
makings that were going on there, and the amount of drunkenness I
saw was exceedingly small. I did the same thing at the adjacent
town of Qwa.
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