CAEEE PE SAÇP.AMP^T0? CLARENCE, FERNANDO f | g
ni THE PORTOS 7i
and their island than we otherwise should possess. Mr.
Hutchinson resided many years on Fernando Po, in the
capacity of H. B. M.'s Consul, with his hands full of the affairs
o f the Oil Rivers and in touch with the Portos of Clarence,
but he nevertheless made very interesting observations on the
natives and their customs. The Polish exile and his courageous
wife who ascended Clarence Peak, Mr. Rogoszinsky, and
another Polish exile, Mr. Janikowski, about complete our series
of authorities on the island. Dr. Baumann thinks they got
their information from Porto sources— sources the learned
Doctor evidently regards as more full of imagination than
solid fact, but, as you know, all African travellers are occasionally
in the habit of pooh-poohing each other, and I own
that I myself have been chiefly in touch with Portos, and that
my knowledge of the Bubi language runs to the conventional
greeting form B l “ Ipori ? ” “ Porto.” “ K e Soko ? ” “ Hatsi
soko ” ‘ Who are you ? ’’-ffi“ Porto.” “ What’s the news ? ”
“ No news.”
Although these Portos are less interesting to the ethnologist
than the philanthropist, they being by-products of his
efforts, I must not leave Fernando Po without mentioning
them, for on them the trade of the island depends. They are
the middlemen between the Bubi and the white trader. The
former regards them with little, if any, more trust than he
regards the white men, and his view of the position of the
Spanish Governor is that he is chief over the Portos. That
he has any headship over Bubis or over the Bubi land—
rtschulla as he calls Fernando P o#he does not imagine
possible. Baumann says he was once told by a Bu b i: “ 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 ? ”
I f 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 e x tin c t; 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