Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/112

 86 WEST AFRICA. animals, such as rabbits and rats, bave been introduced from Europe. The guinea- hen, which the natives do not eat, is extremely common, and the sea-mew whirls in clouds above the strand and reefs. Some of the islets are covered with thick deposits of guano, forming a valuable resource for the peasantry of the neighbour- ing islands. Wollaston asserts that snakes are found in some places, but this is denied by the natives, and Doelter failed to discover any. Ilheo Branco, the " White Island," an islet in the north-west group between Santa Luzia and Sam-Nicolau, is distinguished from all the others by a peculiar fauna. Here are large lizards (Macoscrncusi coctei) elsewhere unknown, which live on a vegetable diet, not on insects like their congeners elsewhere. The puffins here discovered by the members of the Talisman expedition also constitute a new variety of this bird. The islet has not yet been completely explored, but even should nothing further be discovered, the existence of two original species in such a microcosmos is one of the most curious facts in natural history. The surrounding waters are well stocked, and a single haul of the net on a bank teeming with life suffices to capture thousands of fishes. Even in the lower depths marine organisms are scarcely less abundant. From 2,000 feet below the surface the fishing-gear of the Talisman brought up about a thousand fish and nearly two thousand prawns of different species. These resources would be ample for the local wants and for a large export trade, but for the fact that a very large number of the animals in these tropical seas are poisonous Crustaceans, gasteropods, and molluscs also abound, as well as two species of coral, the Corallium rubrum like that of Sicily, and the Pleniocoralliuni Johnsoni, a white variety, so named by the explorers of the Challenger. Some N'eapolitans settled in Sam-Thiago are engaged in the coral fishery, which has become an important local industry. Inhabitants. The Portuguese are traditionally said to have found two indigenous blacks wken they landed on Sam-Thiago. Feijo also states that some Wolof Negroes, escaping from their enemies, were borne by the currents and winds to the large island, which they peopled. But such a voyage would have been little short of miraculous, for the Wolofs never possessed any craft beyond open canoes, while in these waters the winds and currents move southwards ; nor do any contemporary chronicles speak of the islands being inhabited when discovered. The first settlers were undoubtedly some free Portuguese and ]N'( gro slaves. In 1461 some families from Alemtejo and Algarve accompanied the feudatory lords to whom the islands had been granted as fiefs. But the great bulk of the immigrants, who settled first in Sam-Thiago and Fogo, were Wolofs, Felups, Balantos, Papels, and other Negroes, captured on the neighbouring mainland. In 1469 an. exclusive monopoly of the slave trade was granted to the local feudatories by Alfonso Y., in consequence of which the neighbouring coast became a hunting- ground where the landowners procured the slaves required for their plantations. The tropical heats, the distance from the mother-country, the degradation of