In Other Districts The Body Is Also Buried In
The Forest, But Is Completely Covered And An Erection Of Stones Put
Up To Mark The Place.
Little is known of all West African fetish, still less of that of
these strange people.
Dr. Oscar Baumann brought to bear on them his
careful unemotional German methods of observation, thereby giving us
more valuable information about them and their island than we
otherwise should possess. Mr. Hutchinson resided many years on
Fernando Po, in the capacity of H. B. M.'s Consul, with his hands
full of the affairs of the Oil Rivers and in touch with the Portos
of Clarence, but he nevertheless made very interesting observations
on the natives and their customs. The Polish exile and his
courageous wife who ascended Clarence Peak, Mr. Rogoszinsky, and
another Polish exile, Mr. Janikowski, about complete our series of
authorities on the island. Dr. Baumann thinks they got their
information from Porto sources - sources the learned Doctor evidently
regards as more full of imagination than solid fact, but, as you
know, all African travellers are occasionally in the habit of pooh-
poohing each other, and I own that I myself have been chiefly in
touch with Portos, and that my knowledge of the Bubi language runs
to the conventional greeting form: - "Ipori?" "Porto." "Ke Soko?'"
"Hatsi soko": - "Who are you?" "Porto." "What's the news?" "No
news."
Although these Portos are less interesting to the ethnologist than
the philanthropist, they being by-products of his efforts, I must
not leave Fernando Po without mentioning them, for on them the trade
of the island depends. They are the middlemen between the Bubi and
the white trader. The former regards them with little, if any, more
trust than he regards the white men, and his view of the position of
the Spanish Governor is that he is chief over the Portos. That he
has any headship over Bubis or over the Bubi land - Itschulla as he
calls Fernando Po - he does not imagine possible. Baumann says he
was once told by a Bubi: "White men are fish, not men. They are
able to stay a little while on land, but at last they mount their
ships again and vanish over the horizon into the ocean. How can a
fish possess land?" If the coffee and cacao thrive on Fernando Po
to the same extent that they have already thriven on San Thome there
is but little doubt that the Bubis will become extinct; for work on
plantations, either for other people, or themselves, they will not,
and then the Portos will become the most important class, for they
will go in for plantations. Their little factories are studded all
round the shores of the coast in suitable coves and bays, and here
in fairly neat houses they live, collecting palm-oil from the Bubis,
and making themselves little cacao plantations, and bringing these
products into Clarence every now and then to the white trader's
factory. Then, after spending some time and most of their money in
the giddy whirl of that capital, they return to their homes and
recover. There is a class of them permanently resident in Clarence,
the city men of Fernando Po, and these are very like the Sierra
Leonians of Free Town, but preferable. Their origin is practically
the same as that of the Free Towners. They are the descendants of
liberated slaves set free during the time of our occupation of the
island as a naval depot for suppressing the slave trade, and of
Sierra Leonians and Accras who have arrived and settled since then.
They have some of the same "Black gennellum, Sar" style about them,
but not developed to the same ridiculous extent as in the Sierra
Leonians, for they have not been under our institutions. The "Nanny
Po" ladies are celebrated for their beauty all along the West Coast,
and very justly. They are not however, as they themselves think,
the most beautiful women in this part of the world. Not at least to
my way of thinking. I prefer an Elmina, or an Igalwa, or a
M'pongwe, or - but I had better stop and own that my affections have
got very scattered among the black ladies on the West Coast, and I
no sooner remember one lovely creature whose soft eyes, perfect form
and winning, pretty ways have captivated me than I think of another.
The Nanny Po ladies have often a certain amount of Spanish blood in
them, which gives a decidedly greater delicacy to their features -
delicate little nostrils, mouths not too heavily lipped, a certain
gloss on the hair, and a light in the eye. But it does not improve
their colour, and I am assured that it has an awful effect on their
tempers, so I think I will remain, for the present, the faithful
admirer of my sable Ingramina, the Igalwa, with the little red
blossoms stuck in her night-black hair, and a sweet soft look and
word for every one, but particularly for her ugly husband Isaac the
"Jack Wash."
CHAPTER III. VOYAGE DOWN COAST.
Wherein the voyager before leaving the Rivers discourses on dangers,
to which is added some account of Mangrove swamps and the creatures
that abide therein.
I left Calabar in May and joined the Benguela off Lagos Bar. My
voyage down coast in her was a very pleasant one and full of
instruction, for Mr. Fothergill, who was her purser, had in former
years resided in Congo Francais as a merchant, and to Congo Francais
I was bound with an empty hold as regards local knowledge of the
district. He was one of that class of men, of which you most
frequently find representatives among the merchants, who do not
possess the power so many men along here do possess (a power that
always amazes me), of living for a considerable time in a district
without taking any interest in it, keeping their whole attention
concentrated on the point of how long it will be before their time
comes to get out of it.
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