In Barbot's time (1700)
there were only thirty or forty inhabitants, who held the north-
eastern point about a league from the wooding and watering
places. "That handful of blacks has much ado to live healthy, the
air being very intemperate and unwholesome; they are governed by
a chief, who is lord of the island, and they all live very
poorly, but have plenty enough of cucumbers, which grow there in
perfection, and many sorts of fowl." In 1856 the Rev. Mr. Wilson
reckons them at less than 2,000, and in 1862 I was told that
there were about 1,100, of whom 600 were Bengas. In look, dress,
and ornaments they resemble the Mpongwe, but some of them have
adopted the Kru stripe, holding a blue nose to be a sign of
freedom. They consider themselves superior to the "Pongos," and
they have exchanged their former fighting reputation for that of
peaceful traders to the mainland and to the rivers Muni and
Mundah. They live well, eating flesh or fish once a day, not on
Sundays only, the ambition of Henri Quatre: at times they trap
fine green turtle in seines, but they do not turn these "delicate
monsters.
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