More recent evidence supporting this theory is recorded in Mr. 

 Migeod's experiences of his recent trip across the Equator. 



" The naost remarkable feature of the country between the north 

 of the French territory and the coast, the Gaboon area, is that it is 

 becoming a vast graveyard for the dying races of Central Africa. For 

 some time the sands of the Sahara have been advancing southward, 

 and there has been a steady trek of native tribes as if pushed by the 

 sands, south and west, into the French territory. There they are held 

 up by the more vigorous coastal races, and settle down. 



" And they settle down as if determined, to die out. It is, indeed, 

 the most amazing case of racial suicide, on a huge scale, that the world 

 has ever seen. I passed among tribes where the women refused to bear 

 children, and in another generation, if present ideas prevail, they will 

 simply die out. I heard of a tribe further north where the chief has 

 absolutely forbidden marriage, with this same idea. 



" So pronounced is this lack of the will to live, that many tribes 

 have to be compelled by the French Authorities to grow enough food 

 to keep themselves alive, and the arts of pottery and the making of 

 agricultural implements have quite died out." {Daily Chronicle, 

 28th May, 1921.) 



" A feature that brought itself very much to my notice on my over- 

 land journey was the constant succession of abandoned sites of both 

 villages and plantations. 



" They were especially striking in the forest region owing to the 

 different type of vegetation that springs up on an abandoned site. I 

 further passed villages and towns in all stages of antiquity or age, from 

 newly built or building to falling into ruins, and either entirely aban- , 

 doned or partly so. I gathered that the average life of a town might 

 be five years. If the chief died, or there was some sickness, the move 

 to a new site might take place earlier. In any case, at such time as 

 the huts of bush material began to show signs of wear and tear, it was 

 time to seek a new site. I have seen villages left abandoned long before 

 the state of the houses merited it, even houses with plastered walls and 

 superior construction being abandoned as well as the flimsiest shelter. 



" There is, besides, another cause of a village shifting — it is perhaps 

 the principal one. That is, the wearing out of the good soil; and it 

 is useless to build houses of a nature to outlast this process. 



" Good soil is one of the chief obsessions, if I may so describe it, 

 of the Native African Agriculturist. If he understands a rotation of 

 crops and proportional rest periods, he need not move at all. If he 

 does not, however, and is above all a one-article-of-food man, i.e., lives 

 almost entirely on cassada, as many tribes do, he has to move on soon, 

 as a few repeated crops of cassada will wear out any soil. He has no 

 idea of manuring the soil." (West Africa, 8th October, 1921.) 



