These Igalwa Slaves Cultivate The
Plantations, And Bring Up The Vegetables And Fruit To Their Owners'
Villages And Do The Housework Daily.
The interior of the island is composed of high, rocky, heavily
forested hills, with here and there a stream, and here and there a
swamp; the higher land is towards the up-river end; down river there
is a lower strip of land with hillocks.
This is, I fancy, formed by
deposits of sand, etc., catching in among the rocks, and connecting
what were at one time several isolated islands. There are no big
game or gorillas on the island, but it has a peculiar and awful
house ant, much smaller than the driver ant, but with a venomous,
bad bite; its only good point is that its chief food is the white
ants, which are therefore kept in abeyance on Lembarene Island,
although flourishing destructively on the mainland banks of the
river in this locality. I was never tired of going and watching
those Igalwa villagers, nor were, I think, the Igalwa villagers ever
tired of observing me. Although the physical conditions of life
were practically identical with those of the mainland, the way in
which the Igalwas dealt with them, i.e. the culture, was distinct
from the culture of the mainland Fans.
The Igalwas are a tribe very nearly akin, if not ethnically
identical with, the M'pongwe, and the culture of these two tribes is
on a level with the highest native African culture. African
culture, I may remark, varies just the same as European in this,
that there is as much difference in the manners of life between,
say, an Igalwa and a Bubi of Fernando Po, as there is between a
Londoner and a Laplander.
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