LIBERIA. 257 



ria. After them may be ranked the Kpwesi people, a general term 

 for a congeries of tribes speaking dialects of a common language. 

 These KpAvesi (familiarly known by the Americo-Liberians as Pessi, 

 or Pessa) may be as many as 5250.000. In an appendix to this paper 

 the rest of the tribes and their approximate numbers are enumerated. 



In the central parts of Liberia, within the limits of the forest, there 

 is no doubt that cannibalism prevails. This is a very marked feature 

 in the life of the Bella, or Bele. These people are said to relish most 

 keenly the hands and feet, and this very dainty dish is usually set 

 before a king or chief alone. Nowhere in Liberia have I noticed — nor 

 has any explorer encountered or reported — any race of negroes wholly 

 naked, either among men or w^omen, such as are so commonly met 

 with in eastern Equatorial Africa, or until a few years ago in parts of 

 South Central Africa. A certain degree of complete nudity in un- 

 married women was at one time quite a common feature of the natives 

 of the Niger delta, the Cross River, and the Kamerun, while on the 

 upper Cross River complete nudity among the men was just beginning 

 to disappear twenty years ago. Throughout Liberia no one has ever 

 observed complete nudity among either men or women. Though 

 there are a few rare exceptions to this rule, it may generally be ob- 

 served that the marked feature of male nudity so characteristic of the 

 Upper Nile, the eastern equatorial regions, and originally of the north 

 end of Lake Nyassa and central Zambezia, is never met with in the for- 

 ested regions of Africa, except possibly here and there among the 

 Pigmies. Throughout the Kongo basin and countries as completely 

 savage as the innermost parts of Liberia, the men wear a minimum of 

 clothing, which is a concession to ideas of decency, and which, when 

 the race is quite out of touch with the trade of the outer world, is gen- 

 erally a strip of bast (bark cloth) from a fig tree. I have not ob- 

 served any of the savages from the interior of Liberia wearing dressed 

 skins. I am told that so greedy are they after food that when any 

 beast is killed the hide is roasted and eaten. On the other hand, the 

 civilized Mandingos of the north have learned frojn the Fulas or from 

 the Moors, or possibly from both, the most beautiful work in leather. 



Nowhere along the coast of Tjiberia is there a harbor in the sense 

 of the bay at Sierra Leone. All the anchorages, in fact, are open 

 roadsteads. But on the other hand, this is not a particularly danger- 

 ous condition for ships, as the south wind never blows strongly 

 enough to raise a big sea, while the north wind, coming from ott' the 

 land, can only affect the Atlantic at some distance from the shore. 

 But of course this portless condition adds very much to the discom- 

 fort of dealings with Liberia. Although the swell from the choppy 

 surface raised by the wind may not be sufficiently serious to affect big 

 vessels lying at anchor, it is not at all nice for small boats or steam 

 launches, and generally during the rainy season of the year transfer- 



