Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/453

THE CAMEROONS. 375 network of tall creepers. The cultivated plants are also the same— cocoa-nuts, oil-palms, wine-palms, bananas, yams, ground-nut^, sweet potatoes, manioc, and especially colocasia, here called coco, but which is simply the tare of the South Sea Islands. Although still but partly explored, the Cameroons fauna is already known to be extremely diversified. On the banks of the Abo, Buchholz collected about forty species of venomous and harmless snakes, and the same naturalist has discovered in this region some new species of tortoises, cameleons, frogs, toads, and fish. Every fourth year the Cameroons and the neighbouring estuaries teem in the months of August and September with little yellowish shrimps of a hitherto unknown fhalassina species, so closely packed that they are collected in basketfuls. These shrimps are smoked and forwarded in vast quantities to the peoples of the inland plateaux. The insect world is also very rich, butterflies sometimes producing the efPect of a sort of haze in the atmosphere, while the ground sparkles with the ruby and emerald sheen of the beetles. A species of glossina, scarcely differing in appear- ance from the true tsetse, buzzes about men and beasts, but its sting is perfectly harmless and not even very painful. It is remarkable that the spider family is represented by but few species in a region where they might find such abundant prey. The large mammals are gradually retiring from the coastlands, although apes still abound in the forest, but the chimpanzees and gorillas, spoken of by the missionaries have not j-et been seen. The elephant still lingers about the sea- board, but his true domain lies some 60 miles inland in the Mungo basin, where numerous herds are still met. The ivory, however, of the Cameroons elephants is somewhat coarse-grained and of a dull brown colour. In certain circumstances these huge tusks are said to be shed, like the deer's antlers, and traders pretend to be able to recognise by their texture whether they belong to a healthy or diseased animal. Inhabitants. Nearly all the natives of the territory claimed by Germany are classed by enthnologists amongst the Bantu Negroes, that is, the great South African family of which the Zulu Kafirs are typical representatives. Some tribes, however, occupying a part of the district along the left bank of the Meme, chief tributary of the Eio del Hey, are related to those of Old Calabar, and like them speak the Efik language. With the exception of these tribes, numbering about twenty thousand souls, all the rest, as far as is at present known, are of Banti^ speech, although a community of language by no means necessarily implies common descent. From the Niger delta to the Cameroons and Moanya estuaries, the transitions are almost imperceptible in the physical ai^pearance of the natives, who everywhere present nearly the same complexion and general outward features. In the Cameroons territory the chief Bantu tribes, as they may be collectively called, are the Ba-Kisk, that is, people of Kisk on the left bank of the Meme;