all, but only rough shelters of branches. This is, however, a
mistake. Shelters of this kind that you come across are
merely the rough huts put up by hunters, not true houses. The
village is usually fairly well built, and surrounded with a living
hedge of stakes. The houses inside this are four-cornere , e
walls made of logs of wood stuck in edgeways, and surmoun e
by a roof of thatch pitched at an extremely stiff angle, and the
whole is usually surrounded with a dug-out drain to carry o
surface water. These houses, as usual on the West Coast, are
divisible into two classes— houses of assembly, and priva e
living houses. The first are much the larger. The latter are
very low, and sometimes ridiculously small, but still they are
houses and better than those awful Loango grass affairs you
get on the Congo. .
Herr Baumann says that the houses high up on the mountain
have double walls between which there is a free space ; an
arrangement which may serve to minimise the extreme
draughtiness of an ordinary Bubi house— a very necessary mg
in these relatively chilly upper regions. I may remark on my
own account that the Bubi villages do not often lie right on
the path, but, like those you have to deal with up the Calabar
some little way off it. This is no doubt for the purpose of
concealing their whereabouts from strangers, and it does it su
cessfully too, for many a merry hour have I spent dodging
up and down a path trying to make out at what particu ar
point it was advisable to dive into the forest thicket to reach a
village. But this cultivates habits of observation, and a sho
course of this work makes you recognise which tree is which
along miles of a bush, path as easily as you would shops in
your own street at home.
The main interest of the Bubi’s life lies m hunting for
he is more of a sportsman than the majority of mamlanders
He has not any big game to deal with, unless we except
pythons— which attain a great size on the island— and cro -
diles. Elephants, though plentiful on the adjacent mainla" |
are quite absent from Fernando Po, as are also hippos and the
great anthropoid apes; but of the little gazelles small
monkeys, porcupines, and squirrels he has a large supply, an
in the rivers a very pretty otter {Lutra poensts) with yellow
brown fur often quite golden underneath ; a creature which is,
I believe, identical with the Angola otter.
The Bubis use in their hunting flint-lock guns, but chiefly
traps and nets, and, I am told, slings. The advantage of these
latter methods are, I expect, the same as on the mainland,
where a distinguished sportsman once told me : “ You go shoot
thing with gun. Berrah well— but you no get him thing for
sure. No sah. Dem gun make nize. Berrah well. You fren
hear dem nize and come look him, and you hab to go share
what you done kill. Or bad man hear him nize, and he come
look him, and you no fit to get share— you fit to get kill
yusself. Chii! chii! traps be best.” I urged that the traps
might also be robbed. “ No, sah,” says he, “ them bian (charm)
he look after them traps, he fit to make man who go tief swell
up and bust.”
The Bubis also fish, mostly by basket traps, but they are
not experts either in this or in canoe management. Their
chief sea-shore sport is hunting for the eggs of the turtles who
lay in the sand from August to October. These eggs— about
200 in each nest are about the size of a billiard-ball, with a
leathery envelope, and are much valued for food, as are also
the grubs of certain beetles got from the stems of the palm-
i trees, and the honey of the wild bees which abound here.
■ Their domestic animals are the usual African lis t ; cats,
I dogs, sheep, goats, and poultry. Pigs there are too, very
¡domestic in Clarence and in a wild state in the forest.
¡These pigs are the descendants of those imported by the
(Spaniards, and not long ago became such an awful nuisance
in Clarence that the Government issued instructions
■hat all pigs without rings in their noses— i.e. all in a con-
Idition to grub up back gardens— should be forthwith shot
■ found abroad. This proclamation was issued by the
¡governmental bellman t h u s I say— I say— I say— I say.
I RUuPi°Se pig walk~ iron no hve for him nose! Gun shoot.
B 111 him one time. Hear r e ! hear re ! ”
»H ow e v e r a good many pigs with no iron living in their
flonrLg? and escaPed into the interior, and have
Dlantatf j the gr6en bay~tree’ destroying the Bubi’s
m n and eatmg his yams, while the Bubi retaliating