Travels in West Africa: Congo Francais, Corisco and Cameroons Part 28

{200} Diospyros and Copaifua mopane.

{205} Vipera nasicornis; M'pongwe, Ompenle.

{208} I have no hesitation in saying that the gorilla is the most horrible wild animal I have seen. I have seen at close quarters specimens of the most important big game of Central Africa, and, with the exception of snakes, I have run away from all of them; but although elephants, leopards, and pythons give you a feeling of alarm, they do not give that feeling of horrible disgust that an old gorilla gives on account of its hideousness of appearance.

{223} An European coat or its equivalent value is one of the constant quant.i.ties in an ivory bundle.

{241} Specimen placed in Herbarium at Kew.

{286} It is held by some authorities to come from gru-gru, a Mandingo word for charm, but I respectfully question whether gru-gru has not come from ju-ju, the native approximation to the French joujou.

{295} The proper way to spell this name is b.o.o.by, i.e. silly, but as Bubi is the accepted spelling, I bow to authority.

{301} This article has different names in different tribes; thus it is called a bian among the Fan, a tarwiz, gree-gree, etc., on other parts of the Coast.

{306} Care must be taken not to confuse with sacrifices (propitiations of spirits) the killing of men and animals as offerings to the souls of deceased persons.

{324} p.r.o.nounced Tchwee.

{329} Among the Fjort the body cannot be buried until all the deceased's debts are paid.

{338} In speaking of native ideas I should prefer to use the good Yorks.h.i.+re term of "overthrowing" in place of "superst.i.tion," but as the latter is the accepted word for such matters I feel bound to employ it.

{363} "Ts.h.i.+-speaking People," Colonel Sir H. B. Ellis.

{439} Since my return to England I have read Sir Richard Burton's account of his first successful attempt to reach the summit of the Great Cameroons in 1862. His companions were Herr Mann, the botanist, and Senor Calvo. Herr Mann claimed to have ascended the summit a few days before the two others joined him, but Burton seems to doubt this. The account he himself gives of the summit is: "Victoria mountain now proved to be a sh.e.l.l of a huge double crater opening to the south-eastward, where a tremendous torrent of fire had broken down the weaker wall, the whole interior and its accessible breach now lay before me plunging down in vertical cliff.

The depth of the bowl may be 360 feet. The total diameter of the two, which are separated by a rough part.i.tion of lava, 1,000 feet. .

. Not a blade of gra.s.s, not a thread of moss, breaks the gloom of this Plutonic pit, which is as black as Erebus, except where the fire has painted it red or yellow." This ascent was made from the west face. I got into the "Plutonic pit" through the S.E. break in its wall, and was said to be the first English person to reach it from the S.E., and the twenty-eighth ascender, according to my well- informed German friends.

{455} The African a.s.sociation now own two steamers. Alexander Miller Brothers and Co. also charter steamers.

{463} A Naturalist in Mid Africa, 1896.

{465} The accounts given by the various members of the Stanley Emin Relief Expedition well describe the usual sort of West African hinterland work, but the forests of the Congo are less relieved by open park-like country than those of the rivers to the north or south. Still the Congo, in spite of this disadvantage, has greater facilities for transport in the way of waterways than is found east of the Cross or Cameroon.

{468} Export of coffee from the Gold Coast, 1894, given in the Colonial Report on that year published in 1896, was of the value of 1,265 pounds 3s. 4d.; cocoa, 546 pounds 17s. 4d. The greater part of this coffee goes to Germany.

Export of coffee from Lagos, given in Colonial Report for 1892, published in 1893, was of the value of 12 pounds. No figures on this subject are given in the 1894 report, published in 1896, but I cite these figures to show the delay in publis.h.i.+ng these reports by the Colonial Office and the difficulty of getting reliable statistics on West African trade.

{493} "The Development of Dodos." National Review, March, 1896.

{504} Ethnology, p. 266. A. H. Keane, Cambridge, 1896.

{508} Lagos Annual Consular Report (150, p.6), 1894: "There were only three cases of drunkenness. Considering that in the Island of Lagos alone the population is over 33,300, this clearly proves that drunkenness in this part of Africa is uncommon, and that there is insufficient evidence for the contention which is advanced that the native is being ruined by what is so often spoken of as the heinous gin traffic; it is a well-known fact by those in a position best able to judge by long residence that the inhabitants of this country have a natural repugnance to intemperance."

{509} Board of Trade Journal, August 1896.

{514} By slavery, I mean the quasi-feudal system you find existing among the true negroes. I do not mean either the form of domestic slavery of Egypt, or the system of labour existing in the Congo Free State; although I am of opinion that the suppression of his export slave trade to the Americas was a grave mistake. It has been fraught with untold suffering to the African, which would have been avoided by altering the slave trade into a coolie system.

{516} Bilious Haemoglobinuric, black water fever.

{517} See also Klebs and Tommasi Crudeli, Arch. f. exp. Path., xi.; Ceci, ibid., xv.; Tommasi Crudeli, La Malaria de Rome, Paris, 1881; Nuovi Studj sulla Natura della Malaria, Rome, 1881; "Malaria and the Ancient Drainage of the Roman Hills," Pract.i.tioner, ii., 1881; Inst.i.tuzioni de anat. Path., vol. i., Turin, 1882; Marchiafava e Cuboni, Nuovi Studj sulla Natura della Malaria, Acad. dei Lincei, Jan. 2, 1881; Marchand, Virch. Arch., vol. lx.x.xviii.; Laveran, Nature parasitaire des Accidents d'Impaludisme, Paris, 1881; Richard, Comptes Rendus, 1881; Steinberg, Rep. Nat. Board of Health (U.S.), 1881. Malaria-krankheiten, K. Schwalbe; Berlin, 1890; Parkes, On the Issue of a Spirit Ration in the Ashantee Campaign, Churchill, 1875; Zumsden, Cyclopaedia of Medicine; Ague, Dr. M. D.

O'Connell, Calcutta, 1885; Roman Fever, North, Appendix I. British Central Africa, Sir H. H. Johnstone.