Cameroon

“ All the natives are in arms, some purchased by rum by the Germans, others loyal to us. In the old days the Cameroon kings implored the British Government to take the country under its protection. In their own words, they wanted English laws. But the Government took no notice of them until it was too late, until the Germans had forestalled us and taken possession of the country, by buying over the chiefs. If you go into the bush, you run into a thousand dangers: yellow fever, malaria, even starvation, and the natives you encounter may sell you as prisoners to the Germans. ”

“ The same agreement settled a long-standing dispute between Spain and France as to the ownership of the district around the Muni river to be south of Cameroon, Spain securing a block of territory with a coast-line from the Campo river on the north to the Muni river on the south. The northern frontier is formed by the German Cameroon colony, the eastern by 11° 20′ E., and the southern by the first parallel of north latitude to its point of intersection with the Muni river. ”

“ The pagan tribes in the north of the province are lawless cannibals who by constant outrages and murders of traders long rendered the main trade route to Bauchi unsafe, and cut off the markets of the Benue valley and the Cameroon from the Hausa states. Only two routes, one via Wase and the other via Gatari, pass through this belt. In the south of the province a similar belt of hostile pagans closed the access to the Cameroon except by two routes, Takum and Beli. ”

“ Chief Towns.—Duala, the chief town in the protectorate, is situated on the Cameroon estuary at the mouth of the Wuri river in 4° 2′ N. 9° 42′ E. It consists of various trading stations and native towns close to one another on the south bank of the river and known, before the German occupation, as Cameroon, Bell town, Akwa town, &c. Hickory, on the north side of the stream and the starting point of the railway to the interior, is also part of Duala, which has a total population of 22,000, including about 170 Europeans. Duala is the headquarters of the merchants and missionaries. ”

“ The markets most frequented by the English and American separate traders lay on the great middle stretches of the coast—Sierra Leone, the Grain Coast (Liberia) , the Ivory, Gold and Slave Coasts, the Oil Rivers as the Niger Delta was then called, Cameroon, Gaboon and Loango. The swarm of their ships was particularly great in the Gulf of Guinea upon whose shores the vast fan-shaped hinterland poured its exiles along converging lines. ”

“ Thus the German African colony of Kamerun is here called Cameroon, an English form which follows the common practice of English transliteration in regard to its initial letter, but departs, in deference to the German official nomenclature, from the older English Cameroons, a plural no longer justifiable, although most English newspapers and maps still perpetuate it.
In the case of personal names, wherever an English spelling has become sufficiently established both in literature and in popular usage it has been retained, irrespectively of any strict linguistic value. ”

“ Because of its modest oil resources and favorable agricultural conditions, Cameroon has one of the best-endowed primary commodity economies in sub-Saharan Africa. Still, it faces many of the serious problems facing other underdeveloped countries, such as a top-heavy civil service and a generally unfavorable climate for business enterprise. ”

“ The delimitation of the new British territory with the Cameroon territory and its north-eastern extension to Lake Chad was effected by an Anglo-German agreement of 1886, Germany gaining part of the upper Benuë and the southern shore of Lake Chad. In all, the territories controlled by the British Company comprised about 500,000 square miles (more than four times the size of the United Kingdom) . ”

“ If you see a man who seems to you to have a morbid caution in the method of dealing with his hat or folded dinner napkin, judge him not harshly, for the chances are he is from Cameroon, where there are scorpions—scorpions of great magnitude and tough constitutions, as was demonstrated by a little affair up here that occurred in a family I know.
The inhabitants of the French Ivory Coast are an exceedingly industrious and enterprising set of people in commercial matters, and the export and import trade is computed by a recent French authority at ten million [Pg 82] francs per annum. ”

“ On March 29, in spite of an eloquent and perfectly constitutional warning from Monsieur Fallières at a Cabinet Council, the Colonial Minister in the Monis Cabinet, Monsieur Messimy, was instructed to declare the consortium in Cameroon and the Congo arrangement impossible. He made this declaration before the Budget committee at the end of March and to the Chamber of Deputies on April 4. On April 3, the French Government learned of serious trouble in Morocco. Several tribes were rising, and military intervention became inevitable. German irritation was growing. ”

“ They had brought with them all they needed in the way of provisions, clothing, arms and ammunition; and at Old Calabar they purchased a canoe and engaged the services of six stalwart Kru boys. Harry's idea was to travel up-river, crossing the Cameroon frontier west of Bamenda, and thence striking inland towards the mountains in northern German territory, beyond which the Caves of Zoroaster were said to be. ”

“ Mount Cameroon, the highest mountain in Sub-Saharan west Africa, is an active volcano
People Cameroon Population: 16,063,678
note: estimates for this country explicitly take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality and death rates, lower population and growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected (July 2004 est.) ”

“ Gaboon and French Congo (5,000) , a French Colony in W. Africa fronting the Atlantic, between the Cameroon country and the Congo State, and stretching inland as far as the head-waters of the Congo River; in the NW. is the great Gaboon estuary, 40 m. long and 10 broad at its mouth, with Libreville on its N. bank; along the coast the climate is hot and unhealthy, but it improves inland; the natives belong to the Bantu stock; the French settled in it first in 1842, but only since the explorations of De Brazza in 1876-86 have they begun to extend and colonise it. ”

“ The natives round the Cameroon estuary are clever carvers of wood, and make highly ornamental figure heads for their canoes, which also sometimes show very fine workmanship. In the interior the people use the wild-growing cotton and fibres of plants to manufacture coarse drapery and plait-work. Plantations founded by German industry are fairly successful. Large reserves are set apart for the natives by government when marking off the land granted to plantation companies. ”

“ I was four weeks on the way, from Liverpool, and landed at Batanga, in Cameroon, two hundred miles north of the equator. On the second voyage I was five weeks on the way, and landed at Libreville (better known as Gaboon) in the Congo Français, almost exactly at the equator. Libreville was the capital of the French Congo. Gaboon is properly the name of the bay or great estuary upon which Libreville is situated, and is one of the very few good harbours on the west coast. ”

“ On Cameroon peak the forest ascends to 8000 ft.; above it is grass land. Towards the east the forest gradually grows thinner, assumes a park-like appearance, and finally disappears, wide grass uplands taking its place. The country north of the Benue is rich and well cultivated. Cotton and rubber are found in considerable quantities, and fields of maize, corn, rice and sugarcane bear witness to the fertility of the soil. ”

“ Farther north and within 30 m. of Lake Chad is Dikwa (Dikoa) , in Bornu, the town chosen by Rabah (q.v.) as his capital after his conquest of Bornu. Gulfei on the lower Shari and Kusseri on the Logone are also towns of some note. Ngoko is a trading station on the Dscha, in the south-east of the protectorate, near the confluence of that river with the Sanga.
Products and Industry.—Cameroon is rich in natural products, one of the most important being the oil-palm. Cocoa cultivation was introduced by the Germans and proved remarkably successful. ”

“ It is the chief town of the colony, and there are more white men there than elsewhere to buy them. It is not possible for a stranger to ascertain what part of the country a specimen is brought from. The native hunter will not tell the truth, lest some one else should find the game and thus deprive him of its capture and sale. I saw a specimen at Cameroon, and was told it had been captured in that valley, fifty miles from the coast; but I hunted up its history and found with absolute certainty that it was captured near Mayumba, two hundred miles south of Gaboon. ”

“ France, in principle, was not averse to compensation of a kind. If it was to be a question of the Congo she asked Germany to explain what she wanted.
There was no objection in Paris to a rectification of the Cameroon frontier line, but France wanted to know what Germany was prepared to do in exchange in Morocco. Herr von Kiderlen Waechter on July 30 suggested that an agreement which should follow the lines of the 1909 understanding might be possible. Monsieur de Selves immediately asked, through Monsieur Jules Cambon, for a written note explaining and setting forth this suggestion. ”

“ The inhabitants, with the exception of a few mixed tribes along its outer borders, all belong to one great family. A line starting from the Cameroon Mountains on the western coast, second degree north latitude, and drawn, with some slight variations, directly across the continent to the same degree of latitude on the east coast, divides the negro race into two distinct families, perhaps of nearly equal size. ”

“ In some of the Cameroon languages it is lokoko, ngoko, ngok, and on the Congo it is nkogo, nsusu. On the Zambezi it is nkuku; so also throughout the tribes of Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika, and most dialects of South Africa. ↑ From this statement are excepted those tongues classified as “semi-Bantu.” In some languages of the Lower Niger and of the Gold Coast the word for “fowl” is generally traceable to a root kuba. This form kuba also enters the Cameroon region, where it exists alongside of -koko. Kuba may have arisen independently, or have been derived from the Bantu kuku. ”

“ This range, running from north to south, is flanked by a parallel and lower range in the west, with a wide valley between. In the north-west the Upper Guinea mountains send their eastern spurs across the boundary, and from a volcanic rift, which runs south-west to north-east, the Cameroon peak towers up, its summit 13,370 ft. high. This mountain, whose south-western base is washed by the Atlantic, is the highest point on the western side of Africa, and it alone of the great mountains of the continent lies close to the coast. ”

“ Cameroonian (s)
adjective: Cameroonian
Ethnic groups:
Cameroon Highlanders 31%, Equatorial Bantu 19%, Kirdi 11%, Fulani
10%, Northwestern Bantu 8%, Eastern Nigritic 7%, other African 13%,
non-African less than 1% ”

“ They brought horses and horned cattle, unknown in these regions until then, and they founded well-organized states, like that of Adamawa, now divided between Cameroon and the British protectorate of Nigeria. In the vicinity of the rivers Benue, Faro and Kebbi, the people, who are good agriculturists, raise cereals and other crops, while on the plateaus stock-raising forms the chief pursuit of the inhabitants. In this northern region villages are built in the Sudanese zeriba style, surrounded with thorn fences; more important places are enclosed by a well-built wall and strongly fortified. ”

“ The Gabun colony includes the Gabun estuary and the whole of the coast-line of French Congo, together with the basin of the Ogowé river. The inland frontier is so drawn as to include all the hinterland not within the Congo free-trade zone (the Chad district excepted) . The Middle Congo has for its western frontier the Gabun colony and Cameroon, and extends inland to the easterly bend of the Ubangi river; the two circumscriptions extend east and north of the Middle Congo. There is a general budget for the whole of French Congo; each colony has also a separate budget and administrative autonomy. ”

“ The most mountainous districts lie inland from the head of the Gulf of Guinea (Adamawa, &c.) , where heights of 6000 to 8000 ft. are reached. Exactly at the head of the gulf the great peak of the Cameroon, on a line of Volcanic action continued by the islands to the south-west, has a height of 13,370 ft., while Clarence Peak, in Fernando Po, the first of the line of islands, rises to over 9000. Towards the extreme west the Futa Jallon highlands form an important diverging point of rivers, but beyond this, as far as the Atlas chain, the elevated rim of the continent is almost wanting. ”

“ It is the very foundation of the whole structure of African society and is as firmly rooted as their Cameroon Mountain in the African soil. Critics of missions say that the obstacle is insuperable. But we believe in a Power that can say to the mountain: “Be thou removed ”

“ Revenue is raised chiefly by customs dues on spirits and tobacco and a general 10% ad valorem duty on most goods. A poll tax is imposed on the natives. The local revenue (£131,000 in 1905) is supplemented by an imperial grant, the protectorate in the first twenty-one years of its existence never having raised sufficient revenue to meet its expenditure, which in 1905 exceeded £230,000. Order is maintained by a native force officered by Germans.
History.—Cameroon and the neighbouring coast were discovered by the Portuguese navigator, Fernando Po, towards the close of the 15th century. ”