Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/490

 402 WEST AFRICA. children being entirely exempt from rickets and the numerous other maladies that sweep off so many in civilised lands. In these equatorial regions the interior is henceforth opened to European enterprise, and the natives, who till recently took no part in international trade, may now exchange their gums and ivory for European wares. But without systematic cultivation of the soil the French possessions can have no economic value. They will become mere military settlements surrounded by a few groups of factories and missionary stations, and useful for keeping open the communica- tions with the interior. Hitherto no symptoms can be detected of any great social change, except that the Mpongwes are being gradually displaced by the more industrious and more intelligent Fans. But apart from trade, with all its attendant evils, the civilising efforts of the whites have borne so little fruit that a serious beginning has apparently still to be made. What has most to be dreaded is the employment of force, which in a single day would undo the work already accom- plished in the Ogoway and Alima basins by the patience and forbearance of M. Brazza and his associates. Topography. North of the Gaboon estuary there are no settlments beyond a few factories and missionary establishments about the mouths of the San- Benito and other rivers. The largest centre of native population is found in the Spanish island of Corisco, that is, "Lightning," so named from the thunderstorms here witnessed by the first Portuguese navigators. Corisco is a flat island about 6 square miles in extent, forming a southern continuation of Cape St. John, and inhabited by about one thousand Mbengas, over a fourth of whom have been taught to read and write by the Protestant and Catholic missionaries stationed amongst them. No European traders reside on the island, the attempts made by the Dutch in 1879 to make it a commercial settlement having failed. Great Elobey also, lying to the north-east near the head of the bay, has been abandoned to the natives, the foreign dealers confining themselves to Little Elobey, an islet half a square mile in extent lying nearly opposite the mouth of the Muni. From this point they are able to super- intend and communicate with their factories on the coast, for Little Elobey lies in smooth water, sheltered by Corisco and Great Elobey from the Atlantic surf. The only inhabitants are the European traders with their agents and Kroo domestics, who are supplied with provisions by the Mbengas of Great Elobey. The islet enjoys a healthy climate, and serves as a health resort for the whites engaged on the mainland. Ofiicially all these islands depend on the government of Fernando- Po, but this political connection appears to be little better than a fiction, the sovereign power being unrepresented by a single Spanish sentinel. The factories also nearly all belong to Hamburg merchants, paying neither imports nor customs to Spain. Libreville, capital of the French possessions, so named from the emancipated slaves settled here in 1849, lies on the north side of the Gaboon estuary, on a