Its Moods Of Beauty Are Infinite; For The Most Part Gentle And Gorgeous, But I Have Seen It Silhouetted Hard Against Tornado-Clouds, And Grandly Grim From The Upper Regions Of Its Great Brother Mungo.

And as for Fernando Po in full moonlight - well there!

You had better go and see it yourself.

The whole island is, or rather I should say was, heavily forested almost to its peak, with a grand and varied type of forest, very rich in oil palms and tree-ferns, and having an undergrowth containing an immense variety and quantity of ferns and mosses. Sugar-cane also grows wild here, an uncommon thing in West Africa. The last botanical collection of any importance made from these forests was that of Herr Mann, and its examination showed that Abyssinian genera and species predominated, and that many species similar to those found in the mountains of Mauritius, the Isle de Bourbon, and Madagascar, were present. The number of European plants (forty-three genera, twenty-seven species) is strikingly large, most of the British forms being represented chiefly at the higher elevations. What was more striking was that it showed that South African forms were extremely rare, and not one of the characteristic types of St. Helena occurred.

Cocoa, coffee, and cinchona, alas! flourish in Fernando Po, as the coffee suffers but little from the disease that harasses it on the mainland at Victoria, and this is the cause of the great destruction of the forest that is at present taking place. San Thome, a few years ago, was discovered by its surprised neighbours to be amassing great wealth by growing coffee, and so Fernando Po and Principe immediately started to amass great wealth too, and are now hard at work with gangs of miscellaneous natives got from all parts of the Coast save the Kru. For to the Kruboy, "Panier," as he calls "Spaniard," is a name of horror worse even than Portugee, although he holds "God made white man and God made black man, but dem debil make Portugee," and he also remembers an unfortunate affair that occurred some years ago now, in connection with coffee-growing.

A number of Krumen engaged themselves for a two years' term of labour on the Island of San Thome, and when they arrived there, were set to work on coffee plantations by the Portuguese. Now agricultural work is "woman's palaver," but nevertheless the Krumen made shift to get through with it, vowing the while no doubt, as they hopefully notched away the moons on their tally-sticks, that they would never let the girls at home know that they had been hoeing. But when their moons were all complete, instead of being sent home with their pay to "We country," they were put off from time to time; and month after month went by and they were still on San Thome, and still hoeing. At last the home-sick men, in despair of ever getting free, started off secretly in ones and twos to try and get to "We country" across hundreds of miles of the storm- haunted Atlantic in small canoes, and with next to no provisions. The result was a tragedy, but it might easily have been worse; for a few, a very few, were picked up alive by English vessels and taken back to their beloved "We country" to tell the tale.

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