Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/113

CAPE VERD ISLANDS, 87 labour through the employment of slaves and convicts, have hitherto prevented all Portuguese immigration properly so-called, and for four hundred years the only whites in the archipelago have been officials and landowners. Nevertlieless some crossings have taken place, and although the population consists almost exclusively of coloured people, there has been a gradual approach to the white tj'pe. In general the natives have regular features, with straight prominent nose, slightly crisped hair, and very open facial angle. The men are of tall stature and of noble carriage, the women, at least in Santo- Antam, of handsome figure and features. But great differences are observed in the different islands, which must be attributed to the varying degree of mixture and of European culture, to the diverse pursuits, such as fishing, agriculture^ trade, and so forth. In prosperous times the population increases rapidly, the annual excess of births over deaths being more than a thousand. Notwithstanding frequent droughts attended by terrible famines, the number of inhabitants rose from sixty thousand to a hundred thousand between the years 1844 and 1879. Yet epidemics have at times been scarcely less destructive than the famines, and when the cholera passed like a flaming sword over Sam-Nicolau, some villages were completely depopulated. The dead remained for days unburied in the streets of the capital, and houses are still shown which have ever since remained untenanted. All the natives call themselves Catholics, and are held as such, baptism having brought them nominally within the pale of the Church. Each island has its temples and priests, mostly men of colour, who are preferred by the " faithful," because they interfere less with the pagan rites introduced from Africa. Many devout Christians still believe that the felt iceros, that is, "fetish men " or wizards, have the power of making themselves invisible, of poisoning air and water, of spreading blight and disease over plants, animals, and men. Against their fatal power appeal is made to the curandeiros, or " medicine men," at times more for- midable than the fetish men themselves. At Saint Vincent European customs are steadily gaining ground, but many African usages still linger in the other islands, and especially in Sam-Thiago, where the IN'egro element is less mixed than elsewhere. The bride has still to be carried off by a feigned show of abduction. At funerals, especially when the death is attributed to the spells of a magician, the traditional ceremonies of the guisa are scrupulously observed, a procession of howlers preceding the dead, the women tearing their hair and beating their breasts, men creating a tremendous din with their tom-toming, after which the virtues of the departed are commemorated by a funeral banquet and by more drum-beating, continued every night for one or more weeks afterwards in his late home. As in the other Atlantic archipelagoes the system of large estates still prevails, the land seldom belonging to the tiller of the soil, except in Brava. Many domains are so extensive that their limits are unknown to the owner, and vast tracts lie fallow remote from all human habitations. Other properties are assigned to owners who are unable to produce any valid title-deeds, resting their claim exclu- sively on tradition. One third of Sam-Thiago, largest and most densely peopled of