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THE ARORIGINES OF FERNANDO PO. 



The Boobees, who are the aborigines of the island of Fernando Po, 

 do not seem to have an affinity with any of the races of the continent. 

 I have heard that this name was given to them by Captain Kelly, when 

 he landed at North-west, or George's Bay, in 1822, at the place now 

 termed in the charts Kelly's Point. " A Boobee," in their language, 

 signifies " a man." The name Adeej^ahs has also been conferred on 

 them in some missionary works which I have read, but whence this title 

 originated I am at a loss to find out. Lieutenant-Colonel Smith 

 has, in his " Natural History of the Human Species," given portrait"- 

 of a Fernando Po Chief who bore the English name of Cut-throat, 

 and of a Fernandiau woman, neither of whom bears the slightest 

 resemblance in colour or form of feature to any I have ever seen in the 

 island. These faces are more Caucasian in outline, more l)lanched, 

 and possess an expression of deeper suavity and of higher intelligence 

 than I have ever observed in any of the hundreds of countenances 

 that have been before me. He gives them from drawings of the late 

 Captain Fibmore, R.N., and says they are of the Guanche race. 



An interesting description of this race, which constituted the original 

 inhabitants of Teneritfe, is published in the " Memoire de la Societe 

 Ethnologique," at Paris, 1841, in a paper by Sabin Bethelot, entitled, 

 " Memoire sur les Guanches," and in which he makes extracts from a 

 previous account contained in a very curious document from the Mag- 

 liabechi Library at Florence, published in 1827, by M. J. Ciampi. 



I have heai'd the population of the island estimated at thirty 

 thousand ; but judging from the towns I have visited, I cannot 

 conceive that this is correct, moi-e especially as I am not aware of the 

 existence of any mode which can be depended on of obtaining a 

 correct census here, more than in another part of Africa. 



The manners, customs, and superstitions of these people may be 

 similar, yet not more so than in the analogy which we find in all 

 uncivilized and unchristianized people. But the tall stature, the 

 tawny colour, the indubitable evidence of their being descendants of a 

 white race — whether Phcenicians or Carthaginians — fi'om their hair 

 being long, and not crisp, as well as the rare beauty of their women, 

 can find no parallel in the Boobees of the present day at Fernando 

 Po. 



The bodies of the Boobees in a natural condition are as black as 

 those of other negroes, the only essential difference observable in their 

 physique being that in many the hair falls down to the nape of the neck 

 in spiral curls. These arc generally smeared over with a pomatum 

 made of a red dyeing herb, which they call " tola," and which is mixed 



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