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This bird, however, did not seem to be common in the area; at least I did not succeed in encountering it more than two other times, namely on the Meme and Ndian rivers, in June and November.
a tunnel formed by foliage and continued our walk up the nearby Bell Town, accompanied by a Negro boy dressed in a white sweater,
who slowly offered his services.
The terrain was open up here,
and the sun burned brightly where we walked.
With lively interest our gaze swept over the open landscape
with its tall grass, its army of erect
palms, trees and bushes to catch a glimpse of some of
its more striking animal life; and we did not have to search long.
In a bush rising up among the grass, a flock of small splendor finches (Spermcstes, probably punctata) shiny black, greenish with a white belly and white-spotted arm feathers, had taken their place, while chirping, and on the upper branches of a rather narrow but tall tree, two great ibis (Bubulcus ibis) shone like large snowballs in their white attire. This bird, however, did not seem to be common in the area; at least I did not succeed in encountering it more than two other times, namely on the Meme and Ndian rivers, in June and November. The small, beautiful heron, which is about the size of a small sparrow, is widespread over Africa as far as Madagascar and further up to southern Europe and western Asia. Without fear, they had taken up their position right next to the negro houses
and remained safe, while we, at a short distance from the
quite high tree, observed them.
The kollager is not only found, like herons in general, near water, but often far from there on steppes
and desert-like areas, where it sometimes pursues swarms of advancing locusts in groups of thousands. Indeed, it does not entirely avoid the desert itself, but is sometimes found there
at the caravan camps. It has, as is well known, got its name
from the fondness with which it lives among cattle
as well as among zebras, antelopes, buffaloes and elephants. Without
fear, he strolls safely among the grazing or resting
animals, often flying in whole flocks onto their backs to
devour the insects that torment them, which constitute the
favourite food of these herons.
Here, however, they can be of unmixed
joy to their hosts, as they follow them in numbers and, by their dazzling
white clothing, betray them to the hunter from afar.
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Weaver image
The previously unknown female of a magnificent weaver from the forests of Ndian.
The male also has most of the head in yellow and red.
After a watercolor by Axel Ekblom.
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Human ethnogeography
In the northern parts of the colony, however, the
Muhammadan, far superior, subservient to Adamau
the Fulbe people and in the south the Fan people are increasingly invading, the former of whom also
carry off Bautu negroes en masse as slaves.
The great Bantu race, of a common type and basic
language, consists of a large number of tribes, often very different.
Even within the area visited by me there are several such, which, however,
are generally very similar to each other, although a closer
examination finds them more or less well separated.
On the southeastern slope of the Cameroon Mountains, thus, live the Bakwiri or Bakwileh, who are engaged in cattle raising, about 25,000 in number, while the coast south of Victoria is inhabited in a small area by the Bimbia people. Around the mouth of the Cameroon River
and at the lower reaches of the rivers forming it, live the Duala
or Dualla, in the regions west, with Bibundi, north and northwest
of the mountain live the Bomboko, about 20,000, and north of that by Lake Kotta, the Bakundu. At Bavo live the Baji, at Bonge a tribe of
the same name, and south of that on the other side of Meme Ekumbi,
west of here down the coast live the Balundu and by the sea Betikka.
The people at Ekundu and around the mouth of Meme are Balundu or
Barundu, around Kitta live the Balombi or Barombi. At Ndian
factory the negroes still belong to Balundu, but just north of it the Ngolo people take over and further inland the Batanga. At Itoki live the lower Ngolo people, between the lower Ndian and the Akwa Yafe Isangilli, etc.
The intelligent and alert Dualla people do not originally belong to these regions, but have more than a couple of centuries ago migrated from the interior, from the upper Lungasi, and have displaced the former population, the Kwa-Kwa, far inland. The Dualla Negroes are a strong, rather handsome, warlike and trade-loving people. But they are also to a great extent rude, insolent, easily irritated, vengeful, peace-loving, quarrelsome and lazy, and have given the European colonists, for whom at least at the beginning they had no further respect, no small difficulties.
The nature of the Cameroon region varies greatly in different regions. Where, as in the north, the extensive marshy deltas of the rivers do not form the outermost boundary to the sea, often fragmented cliffs of sandstone and granite blocks extend far into the sea, replaced by basalt and lava at the mountain. Then follows a
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Geography
narrow sandy beach, and immediately inside there the dense impenetrable primeval forest, forming a coastal belt of 150 — 200 kilometers wide, only rarely interrupted by smaller plains, such as, for example, north of the Cameroon Mountains, east of the Diiben Falls, which will be discussed in more detail later.
Further inland rises a similarly forested, semicircular hilly highland, extending from the Ballue Mountains in the north to the Campo River, which inwards passes into a vast, beautiful, often park-like grassland, which is further continued by a 7' — 800 m. high plateau, from which, farthest north, on both sides of the Binue, numerous heights and mountains of up to 3,000 m. high project. From the Kamelle Mountains the country slopes down towards Lake Tsadsjön, its northeastern border. Geologically the country is little explored.
The basalt mass of the Kamérun Mountains extends out to the sea.
At the Mungo River a beautiful granite with pink-coloured feldspar is exposed.
On this granite lies white and reddish sandstone, followed by laterite
, the widely spread African, strongly reddish often even
yellowish soil.
South of Dievo, not far from Kottasjön, Valdau found
white quartz sand for the first time during a march north from Mapanja.
Concerning the area inhabited by the Swedes, this
has been geologically investigated by our compatriot engineer P. Dusen.
The greater part of it rests on basalt ground, either,
as at the Cameroon Mountains, completely covering the primary rock,
or northwards from there with partially or, as around Ndian, completely
exposed primary rock. There is reason to suppose that the primary rock in the
interior parts of the country is widely distributed. At the deltas of the river mouths
there are alluvial formations, and the basalt tuffs often prove to be richly vegetated.
According to Dusen, the area examined by him, which
extends from the Cameroon River in the south to the headwaters of the Akwa Yafe, from Lake Elefaut in the east to the mouth of the Calabar River in the
west, is simple and easy to understand in its geological structure. Of the oldest,
Archean, series, there are gray and red gneiss, granulite and diorite-
schist, of the Mesozoic, represented by the Cretaceous system, gray,
partly quite coarse, non-fossil-bearing sandstone, gray-black somewhat
mica clay shale with concretions in certain horizons, and partly
fossil-bearing calcareous sandstone. Of the youngest, Cenozoic series.
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Six weeks from Hamburg, arrived at Bibundi
Bibundi.
So after a six-week journey from Hamburg we were at our first
destination, from where the journey was to be continued into the completely unknown
areas around the rivers Meme, Massake and Ndian, and the delta of the Rio del Rey. Bibundi was also a dry incognita from a zoological point of view, but since the coast not very far from there, both to the north and south, had at least been explored to some extent, it was only in the interior of the country that the most valuable
harvests were to be expected.
But let us take a cursory glance at the region
that surrounds us, its vegetation and changing nature. The
foundation on which we stand, like the mass of the nearby Cameroon mountain, is volcanic, black basalt. The sandbanks extending at the mouth of the Bekongole are also of this color.
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