Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/451

 the ruling race among them, but they have diminished rapidly of late years. The country is very rich in rubber and ebony, which is bought by the Benga native traders, and M'pongwe, and sold to the white traders at Eloby and Cocoa Beach.

Those traders who know the inland tribes describe them as savage and treacherous. The Fans are coming down through this part of the country to the beach all the way along from Batanga to the Gaboon estuary. I cannot hold out much hope that they will enlighten or ameliorate the manners and customs of the older inhabitants as regards trade, but they can teach them a thing or two worth knowing in the way of activity and courtesy. That they will suffer the same extinction that the previous migrants to the Coast have suffered, there is no reason to doubt, for they will be under similar conditions; and Mr. Ibea and myself agree again, that there is something inimical to human life, black or white, in the immediate Coast region of West and South-West Africa, as far down as Congo: and the interior tribes also join us in our opinion. Many times have I, and others, been told by interior tribes that there is a certain air which comes from the sea that kills men—that is just their way of putting it. I call it Paludisme Malariæ, which is just my way of putting it, and of course I fancy that it comes from the rotting, reeking swamp land and lagoons, and not from the sea. Anyhow, white men and black feel it, and suffer and die.