here for a like reason, were the founders of Clarence Town.
The declaration of the Spanish Government stating a
only Roman Catholic missions would be countenanced caused
the Baptists to abandon their possessions and withdraw to
the mainland in Ambas Bay, where they have since remained
and nowadays Protestantism is represented by a e o
Mission which has a sub-branch on the mainland on e
Akwayafe River and one on the Qua Ibo.
The Spaniards, on resuming possession of the island, a
one of their attacks of activity regarding it, and sent ou
with Don Carlos Chacon, who was to take over the comman ,
four Jesuit priests, a secretary, a commissariat officer, a
custom-house clerk, and a transport, the Santa Maria wit
a number of emigrant families. This attempt to colonise
Fernando Po should have at least done the good ot
preventing such experiments ever being tried again with
women and children, for of these unfortunate creatures— for
whom, in spite of its being the wet season, no houses ha
been provided— more than 20 per cent, die in t e SP
o f five months. Mr. Hutchinson, who was English Consul
at the time, tells us that “ In a very short time gaunt figures
o f men, women, and children might be seen crawling throug
the streets, with scarcely an evidence of life m their faces,
save the expression of a sort of torpid carelessness as to
how soon it might be their turn to drop off and die. lh e
Portino, a steamer, carried back fifty of them to Cadiz, who
looked when they embarked more like living skeletons o
skin and bone than animated human beings.’ I quote this
not to cast reproach on the Spanish Government but mere y
to give a fact a case in point, of the deadly Mfa flj o
endeavours to colonise on the West Coast, a thing which is
even now occasionally attempted, always with the same sad
results, though in most cases these attempts are now made
by religious and misinformed people under Bishop Taylors
mission. | , . ,, .
The Spaniards did not entirely confine their attention to
planting colonists in a ready-made state on the island. As
soon as they had settled themselves and built their barracks
1 Ten Years' Wanderings among the Ethiopians, T. J. Hutchinson.
and Government House, they set to work and cleared away
the bush for an area of from four to six miles round the
town. The ground soon became overgrown again, but this
clearing is still perceptible in the different type of forest on
it, and has enabled the gardens and little plantations round
Clarence to be made more easily. My Spanish friends
assure me that the Portuguese, who discovered the island in
1471,1 and who exchanged it and Anno Bom in 1778
to the Spaniards for the little island of Catalina and the
GOVERNOR’S PALACE, FERNANDO PO.
colony of Sacramento in South America, did not do anything
to develop it. When they, the Spaniards, first entered
into possession they at once set to work to colonise and clear.
Then the colonisation scheme went to the bad, the natives
poisoned the wells, it is said, and the attention of the
I Spaniards was in those days turned, for some inscrutable
Î reason, to the eastern shores of the island— a district now
quite abandoned by whites, on account of its unhealthiness
I 1 There is difference of opinion among authorities as to whether
■Fernando Po was discovered by Fernando Po or by Lopez Gon-
5 salves.