Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/457

 THE CAMEROONS. 379 tam-tam or drum not merely for warlike or festive purposes, but for the trans- mission of detailed news. This curious telephonic system, quite as ingenious as the discovery of pictorial writing, consists in a rapid beating of the instrument with varied strength and tone, so combined as to represent either syllables or distinct words. It is a true language, which adepts reproduce by the medium of the lips, but which cannot be understood until the ear learns by practice to distinguish the sounds. The Ba-Kwiri also speak it by means of a kind of horn, whose notes resound from hill to hill. All the initiated on hearing the tam-taming are bound immediately to repeat it, so that intelligence is thus rapidly transmitted to the extremities of the land, like the ripples produced on the surface of a lake by the fall of a stone. Slaves are not allowed to learn this drum language, which very few women have mastered, and the secret of which has never yet been revealed to any European. Anthropophagy as a religious rite survived till recently. On great occasions the body of a man was quartered, each of the four chief headmen receiving a share. All accession to power was preceded by a sacrifice, the king having no right to exercise his functions until his hands were stained with blood. The royal power is more firmly established among the Dwallas than elsewhere in the Cameroons. The kings have grown rich with trade, and one of them is certainly one of the wealthiest men in Africa, a sort of millionaire in the European sense. Their large profits are derived from their position as middlemen for all the transit trade between the interior and the factories on the coast. Hence their alarm at the efforts of the whites to penetrate inland, and commercial jealousy has certainly been the chief cause that has hitherto prevented the exploration of this part of the continent. Travellers who have crossed the zone of the coastlands find themselves suddenly arrested by, a thousand unexpected obstacles; the guides refuse to accompany them, the porters bolt to the bush or throw down their loads midway ; perhaps also on certain occasions the exploring zeal of the whites has been cooled by a dose of poison. Even when the middlemen on the coast allow expedi- tions to be organised, they find means of thwarting them before direct relations can be established with the inland populations. As in the Niger basin the staples of export are palm-oil and nuts. Ivory and some dyewoods are exported, besides caoutchouc, extracted by the Swedish settlers on the Cameroons mountains from CandoIjMa florida, a species of creeper from 160 to 200 feet long. Ebony and a little coffee complete the cargoes taken in exchange for spirits (here generally called rum), tobacco, textile fabrics, pearls, arms, and furniture, spirits representing two-thirds of the total value. Except the Swedish settlers on the mountains, there are no European colonists in the Cameroons, and very few whites even on the coast, beyond some thirty or forty missionaries and traders. Several of the factories are even managed by blacks or men of colour, who show such aptitude for trade that it may be asked whether they may not ultimately acquire a complete monoply of the local trafiic.