from the continent it looks like an immense single mountain
that has floated out to sea. It is visible during clear weather
(and particularly sharply visible in the strange clearness you
get after a tornado) from a hundred miles to seawards, and
anything more perfect than Fernando Po when you sight it, as
you occasionally do from far-away Bonny Bar, in the sunset,
floating like a fairy island made of gold or of amethyst,
•cannot conceive. It is almost equally lovely at close quarters,
namely from the mainland at Victoria, nineteen miles distant.
Its moods of beauty are infinite ; for the most part gent e
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 m 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
undergrdwth 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
Thom£ 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 Portuguee, although he holds
Hod made white man and God made black man, but dem
debil make Portuguee,” and he also remembers an unfortunate
affair that occurred some years ago now, in connection with
conee-growing.
A number of Krumen engaged themselves for a two years’
term of labour on the Island of San Thome, and when they
1 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
I it, vowing the while no doubt, as they hopefully notched away
W t e moons on their tally-sticks, that they would never let the
I l l f l at home know that they had been hoeing. But when
» h e i r moons were all complete, instead of being sent home
with their pay to “ we country,” they were put off from time
o time ; and month after month went by and they were still
_ n 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 tiy and get to “we country” across hundreds of miles
the storm-haunted Atlantic in small canoes, and with next
have0 £ rr iS10nS‘ ■ H rerSUlt Was a tra2edA but it might easily
hv F n worse , for a few, a very few, were picked up alive
by English vessels and taken back to their beloved “ we
a°de5 V ° h thC ^ BUt many a a dead Kruboy or so in it; and many Caa no°nee wwahsi cfho,u nfldo a^titnhg
bottom upwards graphically spoke of madness caused by
bo,rfetoite)hTrldeSPair ^ driVe” i,S °CC"P“ ‘S —
I MymP°rtUgUeSe friends assure me 1 1 1 there was never a
■ o u g h t of permanently detaining the boys and thar 1-h
frequently?doTeS amanka for ete™'5' ¡ U i for I have
V " greatesl le"Sth 1 ‘he island lies N.E. and S.W., and