But The Most Remarkable Instance Of Inferiority The Bubis Display Is
Their Ignorance Regarding Methods Of Working Iron.
I do not know
that iron in a native state is found on Fernando Po, but scrap-iron
they have been in touch with for some hundreds of years.
The
mainlanders are all cognisant of native methods of working iron,
although many tribes of them now depend entirely on European trade
for their supply of knives, etc., and this difference between them
and the Bubis would seem to indicate that the migration of the
latter to the island must have taken place at a fairly remote
period, a period before the iron-working tribes came down to the
coast. Of course, if you take the Bubi's usual explanation of his
origin, namely that he came out of the crater on the top of Clarence
Peak, this argument falls through; but he has also another legend,
one moreover which is likewise to be found upon the mainland, which
says he was driven from the district north of the Gaboon estuary by
the coming of the M'pongwe to the coast, and as this legend is the
more likely of the two I think we may accept it as true, or nearly
so. But what adds another difficulty to the matter is that the Bubi
is not only unlearned in iron lore, but he was learned in stone, and
up to the time of the youth of many Porto-negroes on Fernando Po, he
was making and using stone implements, and none of the tribes within
the memory of man have done this on the mainland.
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