Brown, who attempted to interview him in the seventies, I do
not feel sure, for the Bubis are just the sort of people to keep
a big king going with a variety of individuals. Even the indefatigable
Dr. Baumann failed to see Moka, though he
evidently found out a great deal about the methods of his administration
and formed a very high opinion of his ability, for
he says that to this one chief the people owe their present
unity and orderliness ; that before his time the whole islan
was in a state of internecine war : murder was frequent, an
property unsafe. Now their social condition, according to
the Doctor’s account, is a model to Europe, let alone Africa.
Civil wars have been abolished, disputes between villages being
referred to arbitration, and murder is swiftly and surely
punished. I f the criminal has bolted into the forest and cannot
be found, his village is made responsible, and has to pay
a fine in goats, sheep and tobacco to the value of £\6. Theft
is extremely rare and offences against the moral code also, the
Bybis having an extremely high standard in this matter, even
the little children having each a separate sleeping hut. In
old days adultery was punished by cutting off the offender s
hand. I have myself seen women in -Fernando Po who have
had a hand cut off at the wrist, but I believe those were slave
women who had suffered for theft. Slaves the Bubis do have,
but their condition is the mild, poor relation or retainer form of
slavery you find in Calabar, and differs from the Dualla form,
for the slaves live in the same villages as their masters, while
among the Duallas, as among most Bantu slave-holding tribes,
the slaves are excluded from the master s village and have
separate villages of their own. For marriage ceremonies I
refer you to Mr. Hutchinson. Burial customs are exceedingly
quaint in the southern and eastern districts, where the bodies
are buried in the forest with their heads just sticking out of
the ground. In other districts the body is also buried in the
forest, but is completely covered and an erection of stones
put up to mark the place.
Little is known of all West African fetish, still less of that
of these strange people. Dr. Oscar Baumann brought to bear
on them his careful unemotional German methods of observation,
thereby giving us more valuable information about them