FERNANDO I'O AND ’I'llI1'. Ill)HIM C M . I l l
buys, t\ud here in fairly neat houses they llVQj collecting pulm-
oil tVoin (ho Bl\bi§sand fiiaklng IhcmHclvcm little cttCRO plantations,
and bringing those products into Clarence every now
and then to the white trader’s factory, Then, after spending
some time and most of their money in the giddy whirl of that
capital, they return to their homes and recover, There is a
class o f them permanently resident in Clarence, the city
men of Fernando I’o, and these are very like the Sierra
Leonians of Free Town, but preferable. Their origin is practically
the same as that of the Free Towners, They are the
descendants of liberated slaves set free during the time of
our occupation of the island as a naval depot for suppressing
the slave trade, and of Sierra Leonians and Accras who
have arrived and settled since then. They have some of the
same " Black gennellum, Sar ” style about them, but not
developed to the same ridiculous extent as in the Sierra
Leonians, for they have not been under our institutions.
The “ Fanny Po ” ladies are celebrated for their beauty all
along the West Coast, and very justly. They are not however,
as they themselves think, the most beautiful women in
this part of the world. Not at least to my way of thinking.
I prefer an Elmina, or an Igalwa, or a M’pongwe, or— but I had
better stop and own that my affections have got very scattered
among the black ladies on the West Coast, and I no sooner
remember one lovely creature whose soft eyes, perfect form
and winning, pretty ways have captivated me than . I think of
another. The Fanny Po ladies have often a certain amount
o f Spanish blood in them, which gives a decidedly greater
delicacy to their features :— delicate little nostrils,, mouths not
too heavily lipped, a certain gloss on the hair, and a light in
the eye. But it does not improve their colour, and I am
assured that it has an awful effect on their tempers, so I think
I will remain, for the present, the faithful admirer of my sable
Ingrimma, the Igalwa, with the little red blossoms stuck in her
night-black hair, and a sweet soft look and word for every one,
but particularly for her ugly husband Isaac the “ Jack Wash.”
CH A P T E R IV
LAGOS BAK
Which the general reader may omit a* the voyager give» herein no detail»
of Old Calabar or of other thing» of general interest, but discourses
diffusely on the local geography and the story of the man who wasted
coal.
I WILL not detain you with any account of the Oil Rivet»
here. They are too big a subject to compress for one thing;
for another I do not feel that I yet know enough to have the
right to speak regarding them, unless I were going to do so
along accepted, well-trodden lines, and what I have seen and
personally know of the region does not make me fed at all
inclined to do this. So I will wait until I have had further
opportunities of observing them.
The natives I have worked at, but as their fetish is o f exceeding
interest, I have relegated it to a separate chapter,
owing to its unfitness to be allowed to stray about in the rest
of the text, in order to make things generally tidier. The
state of confusion the mind of a collector like myself gets into
on the West Coast is something simply awful, and my notes
for a day will contain facts relating to the kraw-kraw. price
of onions, size and number of fish caught, cooking recipes,
genealogies, oaths (native form of), law cases, and market
prices, &c., &c. And the undertaking of tidying t W thirejs
up is no small one. As for one’s personal memory it becomes
a rag-bag into which you dip frantically when some one asks
you a question, and you almost always fail to secure your
particular fact rag for some minutes.
After returning from the short visit to Fernando
Po made in their company, owing to the great kind