The affairs of Old Town claim our first attention this year, for they reached a crisis, and ended in its destruction. Mr. and Mrs. Edgerley taught the school there, and kept meetings on the Lord's day in the town, and at other times in their own house, besides visiting several villages of the Qua people—the aborigines of that part of the country. He was also much engaged in printing, and produced some of the best specimens of typography to be seen on the coast, whereby he greatly aided the cultivation of the native tongue by his brethren, and the progress of the schools.

The chief of the town, Willy Tom Robins, was deeply sunk in the gross vices, and imbued with the superstitions of his country; and, in both respects, his people, for whose improvement he had no care, were like himself. At the foot of the hill on which stands the mission-house is the spring-head, whence flows the stream where the mission family, and some of the ships, procured their best water. In the thicket around the spring-head was the sacred place of Anansa, the god of Old Town, and there also the old chief said he kept his shadow, or soul—the word for shadow being the only one in Efik for the invisible, immortal part of man.