Birds of Fernando Po. 333 



scrape themselves with small knives, which are attached to their 

 left upper arms for that purpose by a string band. Horrible 

 deformities are also produced by hempen bands about six 

 inches in width, which are fixed tight round the upper arms 

 and below the knees. By way of adornment, they frequently 

 plaster their bodies, faces, and hair with clay, dyed red with 

 a leaf of a tree indigenous to the island. Patterns are often 

 indulged in. It was quite a common thing to see tiny babies 

 on their mothers' backs literally coated with this clay. 



Heavy necklaces, bracelets, and anklets of beads deftly 

 woven together in alternate bands of colour are worn — red, 

 yellow, and blue being the most favoured colours. These 

 ornaments sometimes consist of a very small pointed land- 

 shell. It is treated in the same way as the beads, and 

 shews rank in the wearer. Before the introduction of 

 trade-goods these shells were the current coin in the island, 

 just as cowries were with the West-Coast natives. Little 

 clothing is worn, except a loin-cloth of the scantiest descrip- 

 tion, in many cases replaced at the posterior by a tail of 

 twisted cloth. A flat circular hat of woven grass, with a 

 small pepper-pot crown, is worn, secured to the hair by a 

 wooden skewer ; this is often decorated with the skin of a 

 small tree-squirrel and the blue pinion-feathers of a large 

 Plantain-eater {Corythceola cristata). 



Although it was now towards the end of the rainy season, 

 the rains were still heavy. The native track along which we 

 journeyed was slippery, and everything dripped with moisture. 

 We were soon drenched through, and it w r as with difficulty 

 that we could keep our guns dry. Our progress was slow, 

 never more than two miles an hour, the carriers frequently 

 slipping and stumbling, while in many places the path had 

 to be cleared of undergrowth. At times it debouched into 

 open glades, where birds mustered strongly, revelling in 

 the bright sunlight, which scintillated on the delicate pink- 

 tinted leaves of the cocoa-plants, and, where the ground 

 sloped down from the wooded hills to cultivated land, inter- 

 spersed with palms and mighty cotton-trees, with their 

 colossal branches in pale contrast to the blue background of 



