I Have Seen This
Sort Of Thing Over In Victoria, But I Like To Get A Grown, Strong
Man, And A Consul Of Her Britannic Majesty, To Say It For Me.
Having discoursed at large on the various incomers to Fernando Po we
may next turn to the natives, properly so-called, the Bubis.
These
people, although presenting a series of interesting problems to the
ethnologist, both from their insular position, and their
differentiation from any of the mainland peoples, are still but
little known. To a great extent this has arisen from their
exclusiveness, and their total lack of enthusiasm in trade matters,
a thing that differentiates them more than any other characteristic
from the mainlanders, who, young and old, men and women, regard
trade as the great affair of life, take to it as soon as they can
toddle, and don't even leave it off at death, according to their own
accounts of the way the spirits of distinguished traders still
dabble and interfere in market matters. But it is otherwise with
the Bubi. A little rum, a few beads, and finish - then he will turn
the rest of his attention to catching porcupines, or the beautiful
little gazelles, gray on the back, and white underneath, with which
the island abounds. And what time he may have on hand after this,
he spends in building houses and making himself hats. It is only
his utterly spare moments that he employs in making just sufficient
palm oil from the rich supply of nuts at his command to get that rum
and those beads of his. Cloth he does not want; he utterly fails to
see what good the stuff is, for he abhors clothes. The Spanish
authorities insist that the natives who come into the town should
have something on, and so they array themselves in a bit of cotton
cloth, which before they are out of sight of the town on their
homeward way, they strip off and stuff into their baskets, showing
in this, as well as in all other particulars, how uninfluencible by
white culture they are. For the Spaniards, like the Portuguese, are
great sticklers for clothes and insist on their natives wearing
them - usually with only too much success. I shall never forget the
yards and yards of cotton the ladies of Loanda wore; and not content
with making cocoons of their bodies, they wore over their heads, as
a mantilla, some dozen yards or so of black cloth into the bargain.
Moreover this insistence on drapery for the figure is not merely for
towns; a German officer told me the other day that when, a week or
so before, his ship had called at Anno Bom, they were simply
besieged for "clo', clo', clo';" the Anno Bomians explaining that
they were all anxious to go across to Principe and get employment on
coffee plantations, but that the Portuguese planters would not
engage them in an unclothed state.
You must not, however, imagine that the Bubi is neglectful of his
personal appearance.
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