Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/150

 118 WEST AFEICA. exiles have returned to Cuba, and have not been replaced by any corresponding industrial class. Like that of Annobon, the trade of Fernando- Po is in the hands of the English and Portuguese dealers. But this trade is of slight importance, and has even recently diminished. The land is divided into large estates, and cultivated by Kroomen. But these temporary labourers, having often been maltreated, show great reluctance to return to the island, and at times the planters lack the hands required to harvest their crops. Santa- Isabel, the Clarence Town of the English, capital and only town in the island, forms a group of little wooden houses, each surrounded by its verandah, and all embowered in verdure. The terrace on which the town is built develops a level plain at the foot of green hills and on the shore of a well- sheltered bay resembling a cirque or semicircular crater. The population numbered a little over eleven hundred in 1877, of whom only ninety-three were whites. The climate is one of the most dreaded in the equatorial lands, and in 1862 a fourth of the white population, at that time two hundred and fifty souls, was carried off by yellow fever. In one of the neighbouring cemeteries lie the remains of the explorer, Richard Lander. Since 1859 Fernando- Po possesses a health resort, the first founded by the whites in the tropics. This is the village of Basileh, lying at an altitude of over 1,000 feet a little to the south of Santa-Isabel, and near a Bubi village. In the neighbourhood are the principal cinchona plantations of the island. Fernando-Po, yielded to the Spaniards by Portugal in 1778, was soon after abandoned by them on account of its insalubrity. But their place was gradually taken by the English, without, however, claiming possession of the island, and in 1827 Clarence Town became one of their chief stations for the suppression of the slave trade. But fearing England might permanently annex the island, Spain resumed possession in 1845. A small garrison occupies the forts, some Spanish missionaries are engaged in evangelising the blacks, and political offenders are often interned in the island.