Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/396

 venenomm), which is now used in the treatment of ophthalmia. Formerly criminals were put to death in the Bonny district with every refinement of cruelty They were attached, half torn asunder, to two gibbets set up on the beach and then chopped to pieces, beginning with the hands and fore-arms, and when nothing remained but the trunk, the heart was torn from the breast.

These Bonny men are the keenest traders on the coast, although closely pressed by their eastern neighbours, the Andoni, Quas, and Efiks of Old Calabar. These three tribes speak dialects of a radically distinct language, possibly related to others known only by name in the unexplored interior. The Efik, which alone has been seriously studied, seems to occupy an intermediate position between the Negro tongues in the north and west, and the great Bantu family, which begins in the Cameroon highlands, immediately east of the Rio del Rey.

Except a few missionaries, traders, and officials in the employment of the Royal African Company, no Europeans are settled in this region, where the early attempts at acclimatisation proved disastrous. Of the forty-nine whites on board the first two steamers that ascended the Niger in 1832, nine only escaped with their lives ; and on three other steamers sent by a philanthropic society in 1841, forty-eight out of a hundred and forty- three died during a short voyage of a few weeks. The "model farm" founded by them on the right bank above the confluence was not quite cleared for cultivation when the death of all the Euro- peans restored the land to wild beasts and the jungle. But then came Baikie's ever-memorable expedition in 1854, when by the judicious use of wine and quinine, and other sanitary precautions, a long voyage was made up the Benue without the loss of a single life. Henceforth Europeans had a decisive example of the proper measures to take, if not for complete acclimatisation, at least for temporary protection against the perils of this dangerous environment.

Topography.

The Upper Benue basin lies almost entirely within the province of Adamawa, which is tributary to the Sultan of Wurno. According to native report, the most frequented market in this almost unknown region is Ngaundere, on the water-parting between the streams flowing to the Benue, Logon-Shari, Congo, and Old Calabar. Here are also the large towns of Chamba, on the south slope of Mount Alantika ; Kontcha, where the sugar-cane grows wild, and Yola, near the south bank, present capital of Adamawa, or Fumbina, as it was called before the Fulah conquest. At that time the chief town was Gurin, on the left bank of the Faro, 24 miles above its confluence with the Benue. East of this confluence is Reï-Buha, whose strong ramparts show that the so-called "savage" aborigines had already developed a certain degree of culture before the arrival of the Fulahs.

North of the Faro mouth stretches the delightful land of Demsa with its pleasant villages scattered amid the thickets at the foot of the wooded granite hills. On the route from Demsa to Bornu, Barth passed the Arab town of Belem, then Sarau, inhabited partly by Fulahs, partly by Berehere or colonists from Bornu;