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.
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