Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/664

 entreated that the execution of the foregoing decree should be delayed until a final appeal could be made to the Queen of Spain. The commander of the Balboa, Don Carlos Chacon, courteously expressed his readiness to forward this memorial to his Queen, and this was done; but things still proving most unsatisfactory to the Baptists, they decided to leave Clarence and make a settlement at the foot of Cameroon Mountain, in Ambas Bay, which was then regarded as British property, and this settlement they called Victoria. The Baptist missionary at Clarence in those days was a Mr. Saker, to whom we are indebted for a great deal of valuable scientific information about this region, and whose name is still held in great reverence among the native Baptists on the West Coast. This gentleman with his family and two or three families of the native members of his church, went to Victoria, acquired a large stretch of land there—a possession which has been honourably acknowledged by the present German Government—and built their new church and schools, and to this day they are the dominant party in Victoria, under the leadership of Mr. Wilson, who came over when a boy with Mr. Saker. Mr. Wilson has been appointed as magistrate, and presides over a bench whose other members are two chiefs; and before this bench come all the minor offences of the native population. The Baptists of Victoria have no white minister among them, but seem a very well-ordered and prosperous body. They cherish a feeling of grievance against the English for the way they were first abandoned to the Spaniards and then handed over to the Germans, but they still profess a sentimental attachment to the English. However, as far as I had opportunities of judging, they have little to complain of in the way the German Government have treated them—a very different line of action to that of the Spanish Government, for the Spaniards virtually confiscated the extensive property which the Baptists had received from the West African Company at Clarence. The Spanish version of this affair is that the real criminals were the West African Company, who had no rights whatsoever to make over the land to the Baptists, as the land was not theirs to dispose of.

Mr. Saker, when he settled in Ambas Bay, formed a very