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Extensive extracts of the three-year diary of Efik merchant Antera Duke (1785–1788) of Duke Town, Old Calabar (Calabar, Nigeria) survive today because of the efforts of William Valentine and Arthur W.Wilkie a hundred years ago.Valentine,a clerk in the Foreign Mission Office of the Free Church of Scotland, discovered and preserved the bound diary, which he found in a pile of rubbish.Wilkie, a missionary on furlough from Duke Town in 1907, transcribed most of the words to preserve the information and perhaps use it in a future study of Calabar life and customs.After the diary was misplaced in Edinburgh during the Second World War years,Wilkie prepared a type- script of his handwritten extracts and translated Antera Duke’s words into a more readable “modern English” version. In November 1951 he brought his Antera Duke material to the attention of Professor Daryll Forde, director of the International African Institute,seeking advice as to the possibility of pub- lishing the diary.Wilkie achieved his goal of seeing his work in print in 1956, two years before his death.