I May Remark On My Own Account That The Bubi Villages Do
Not Often Lie Right On The Path, But, Like Those You Have To Deal
With Up The Calabar, Some Little Way Off It.
This is no doubt for
the purpose of concealing their whereabouts from strangers, and it
does it successfully too,
For many a merry hour have I spent dodging
up and down a path trying to make out at what particular point it
was advisable to dive into the forest thicket to reach a village.
But this cultivates habits of observation, and a short course of
this work makes you recognise which tree is which along miles of a
bush path as easily as you would shops in your own street at home.
The main interest of the Bubi's life lies in hunting, for he is more
of a sportsman than the majority of mainlanders. He has not any big
game to deal with, unless we except pythons - which attain a great
size on the island - and crocodiles. Elephants, though plentiful on
the adjacent mainland, are quite absent from Fernando Po, as are
also hippos and the great anthropoid apes; but of the little
gazelles, small monkeys, porcupines, and squirrels he has a large
supply, and in the rivers a very pretty otter (Lutra poensis) with
yellow brown fur often quite golden underneath; a creature which is,
I believe, identical with the Angola otter.
The Bubis use in their hunting flint-lock guns, but chiefly traps
and nets, and, I am told, slings.
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