Fernando Po Is Said To Be A Comparatively Modern Island, And Not So
Very Long Ago To Have Been Connected With The Mainland, The Strait
Between Them Being Only Nineteen Miles Across, And Not Having Any
Deep Soundings.
{37} I fail to see what grounds there are for these
ideas, for though Fernando Po's volcanoes are not
Yet extinct, but
merely have their fires banked, yet, on the other hand, the island
has been in existence sufficiently long to get itself several
peculiar species of animals and plants, and that is a thing which
takes time. I myself do not believe that this island was ever
connected with the continent, but arose from the ocean as the result
of a terrific upheaval in the chain of volcanic activity which runs
across the Atlantic from the Cameroon Mountains in a SSW. direction
to Anno Bom island, and possibly even to the Tristan da Cunha group
midway between the Cape and South America.
These volcanic islands are all of extreme beauty and fertility.
They consist of Fernando Po (10,190 ft.); Principe (3000 ft.); San
Thome (6,913 ft.); and Anno Bom (1,350 ft.). San Thome and Principe
are Portuguese possessions, Fernando Po and Anno Bom Spanish, and
they are all exceedingly unhealthy. San Thome is still called "The
Dutchman's Church-yard," on account of the devastation its climate
wrought among the Hollanders when they once occupied it; as they
seem, at one time or another, to have occupied all Portuguese
possessions out here, during the long war these two powers waged
with each other for supremacy in the Bights, a supremacy that
neither of them attained to.
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