Fernando Po or Fernando Poo

FERNANDO PO or FERNANDO POO, a Spanish island on the west coast of Africa, in the Bight of Biafra, about 20 m. from the mainland, in 3° i 2' N. and 8° 48' E. It is of volcanic origin, related to the Cameroons system of the adjacent main land, is the largest island in the Gulf of Guinea, is 44 m. long from N.N.E. to S.S.W., about 20 m. broad, and has an area of about 810 sq. miles. The shores are steep and rocky and the coast plain narrow. This plain is succeeded by mountain slopes which culminate in the cone of Clarence peak or Pico de Santa Isabel (9,369 ft.), in the north-central part of the island. The Misterio peak in the south is 8,600 feet. There are numerous other peaks between 4,000 and 6,000 ft. high. The mountains contain craters and crater lakes, and are covered, most of them to their summits, with forests. Torrential streams run down the intervening valleys. The forest trees include oil palms and tree ferns, but there are many varieties, embracing ebony, mahogany and the African oak. The undergrowth is dense; it includes the sugar-cane and cotton and indigo plants. The fauna includes an telopes, monkeys, lemurs, the civet cat, porcupine, pythons and green tree-snakes, crocodiles and turtles. The mean temperature on the coast is 78° F and varies little. In the higher altitudes there is considerable daily variation. While the lowlands are very unhealthy, the climate at 2,000 ft. and above is fairly good and in the south temperate. The average annual rainfall is about loo in.; July to October are the wettest months.

Population.

In addition to about 30o Europeans, mostly Spaniards, the pop. (1931) 20,873 consists of the Bubis or Bube (formerly also called Ediya), who occupy the interior, and the coast dwellers, a mixed race, descended from negro slaves, or free negroes who settled in the island, with a strong admixture of Portuguese and Spanish blood, and known to the Bubis as "Portos"—a corruption of Portuguese. The Bubis are of Bantu stock and early immigrants from the mainland. Physically they are a finely developed race, light brown in colour. They are ex tremely jealous of their independence and unwilling to take service with Europeans. In their primitive condition they are found only in the south, their chief settlement being in the Moka plateau. They wear very little clothing, but adorn wrists and ankles with bangles made of ivory, shells, beads or grass. They use wooden weapons but stone axes and knives were in use as late as 1858. Their villages are built in the hills ; their houses are rectangular, with numerous fireplaces and sometimes with three or four doors. They make good pottery. Hunters and fishers, the Bubis are also fair agriculturalists. Owing however to in-breeding, an addiction to strong wines, and the ravages of sleeping sickness the Bubis are slowly dying out. The staple foods generally are millet, rice, yams and bananas.

The principal settlement is Santa Isabel, otherwise known as Port Clarence (pop. 1,400), a safe and commodious harbour on the north coast.

In Santa Isabel resides the governor of Spanish Guinea, as the Spanish islands in the Gulf of Guinea and, on the mainland, the Muni River settlement, are collectively called. In its graveyard are buried Richard Lander and several other explorers of West Africa. The chief industry until the close of the 19th century was the collection of palm oil ; since then cocoa has become the main product for export.

History.

The island was discovered towards the close of the r 5th century by a Portuguese navigator called Fernaodo Po, who, struck by its beauty, named it Formosa, but it soon came to be called by the name of its discoverer, though some authorities main tain that another Portuguese seaman, Lopes Gonsalves, was before him. The years 1469, 1471 and 1486 are variously given as those of the date of the discovery. A Portuguese colony was established in the island, which together with Annobon was ceded to Spain in 1778. The first attempts of Spain to develop the island failed and in 1827, with the consent of Spain, the ad ministration was taken over by Great Britain, the British "super intendent" having a Spanish commission as governor. By the British Fernando Po was used as a naval station for the ships engaged in the suppression of the slave trade. The British head quarters were named Port Clarence and the adjacent promontory Cape William, in honour of the duke of Clarence (William IV.) . In 1844 the Spaniards reclaimed the island, refusing to sell their rights to Great Britain. They hoisted the Spanish flag, appointing a British resident, John Beecroft, governor. During the British occupation a considerable number of Sierra Leonians, West In dians and freed slaves settled in the island, and English became and remains the common speech of the coast peoples. In 1858 a Spanish governor was sent out, and the Baptist missionaries who had laboured in the island since 1843 were compelled to withdraw. The Jesuits who succeeded the Baptists were also expelled, but mission and educational work is now carried on by other Roman Catholic agencies, and (since 187o) by the Primitive Methodists. In 1879 the Spanish government recalled its officials, but a few years later when the partition of Africa was being effected, they were replaced and a number of Cuban political prisoners were deported thither. Very little was done to develop the resources of the island until after the loss of the Spanish colonies in the West Indies and the Pacific, when Spain turned her attention to her African possessions. Cocoa plantations were started. In 1900 the Spaniards gave France, in return for territorial concessions on the mainland, the right of pre-emption over the island and her other West African pos sessions.

The administration of the island is in the hands of a governor general, assisted by a council, and responsible to the Direction General de Colonias y Protectorados, a department in the Presi dencia del Consejo (Prime Minister's Office) at Madrid. The governor-general has under his authority the sub-governors of the other Spanish possessions in the Gulf of Guinea, namely, the Muni River Settlement, Corisco and Annobon (qq.v.). None of these possessions is self-supporting. The metropolis contributes two and a half million pesetas (LIoo,000) p.a. to their expenses. In 1926 a special credit of 26,000,000 pesetas was set aside to develop the resources of the islands and mainland territories, to be spent in a period of ten years. The programme includes the construction of roads, harbours, hospitals, schools, health organ ization, telephones and telegraphs and an agricultural school with model farms.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. See T. J. Hutchinson, some time British Consul Bibliography. See T. J. Hutchinson, some time British Consul at Fernando Po, Impressions of Western Africa, chs. xii. and xiii. (1858) , and Ten Years' Wanderings among the Ethiopians, cs. xvii. and xviii. (i861) ; San Javier, Tres Anos en Fernando Poo (1875) ; 0. Baumann, Eine africanische Tropeninsel: Fernando Poo and die Bube (Vienna, 1888) ; Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, c. iii. (1897) ; E. d'Almonte, "Someras Notes . . . de la isla de Fernando Poo y de la Guinea continental epanola," in Bol. Real. Soc. Geog. of Madrid (1902) ; Sir H. H. Johnston, George Grenfell and the Congo . and Notes on Fernando Po (1908) ; Bravo Carbonell, Guinea Espanola (bibl. 1926) . For the Bubi language see J. Clarke, The Adeeyah Vocabulary (1841) , and Introduction to the Fernandian Tongue (1848) . Consult also Wanderings in West Africa (1863) and other books by Sir Richard Burton, who was consul at Fernando Po in the years 1861-6s.