Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/227

 charms, and holy medals from the Portuguese priests, and subject to the ordeal of poisoning those accused of bewitching men or animals. The old matriarchal usages still prevail among them, as among most of ^ the tribes along the coast. Rank and property are transmitted in the female line, and the women join in the village deliberations, often exercising a decisive influence on the issue.

The coast peoples, hemmed in by the invaders from the interior, have received from the Portuguese the collective name of Felups, and they certainly show a common affinity in their usages and language. But they have lost all national coherence, and are now broken up into a multitude of distinct clans, each with its tribal name and separate territory, mostly some island or peninsula in the delta. Westwards, near the sea, dwell the Aiamats, Yolas, Kabils or Karons; farther east, but north of the Casamanza, the Jigushes or Juguts, the Fognis, the Kaïmuts, and those Felups of the Songrogu, whose large heads have earned for them the Portuguese name of Yacas. South of the river follow the Banjiars, Fuluns, and Bayots, these being most distinguished by their speech and diminutive stature from all the Felup peoples.

From a former higher period of culture most of the Felups have preserved the art of erecting relatively large and comfortable dwellings, very substantial earth houses which resist the weather for years, and which are divided into several compartments in the interior. The Felups, on the right bank of the river, build very large and shapely canoes with the trunk of the bombax, and manufacture arrows, darts, and swords, which they use with much skill. But the social and political bonds are very loose, every hamlet, so to say, constituting a separate state. Even family ties are easily formed and as easily dissolved, and in some places the children are destined beforehand to serve in the household of the village chief.

Most of the Felups have the idea of a supreme being, who, for them, is at once the heaven, the rain, the wind, and the storm. Ruled by terror, they are a prey to the medicine-men, and nowhere else in Africa are the wizards more invoked and more hated. They are accused of killing by their malevolent arts and philtres, and they are at times themselves seized and tortured to death. But social changes are gradually taking place amongst the Felup populations settled in the neighbourhood of European factories, and employed by the traders as carriers.

In the Casamanza basin the chief military and commercial station is Sedhiu, called also Frances-Kunda ("House of the French"), which since its foundation in 1837 on the right bank, at the head of the navigation, has become a real town with European buildings and extensive depots. Some native villages have sprung up round about, whence are obtained ample supplies of provisions of all sorts. Ziguinchor, the old Portuguese station ceded to France by the recent treaty, and situated on the left bank, below the Songrogu confluence, occupies a favourable position for the overland trade between the Gambia and Cacheo basins. On the