LIFE AT THE CAMEROON'S. 753 



they pride themselves on the figures and tricks they can execute 

 with it. The boatmen in these war-vessels delight in arraying 

 themselves with warlike emblems — helmets of goat-skin, guns of 

 all kinds except good ones, swords, and bush-knives. While the 

 war vessels are highly adorned, the trading vessels and those in 

 common use are plain. 



On account of their lack of industry, the Cameroons people 

 make very few articles beyond what are necessary for their own 

 use ; and it is therefore hard to obtain a satisfactory collection of 

 their products. If they could be taught to apply themselves to 

 anything, they would make most excellent wood-carvers. The 

 figure-heads and models of their canoes, and their chairs, are very 

 fine. They make handsome mats and bags of bast. Their fishing 

 nets and lines do them credit. Carved canes of ebony and cala- 

 bashes are harder to procure. An ivory-cutter drives a good busi- 

 ness in making walking-sticks for persons of means. The gar- 

 dens, in which banana-trees and yams are the most important 

 plants, are taken care of by the women, who also look after the 

 eggs, committing the sale of them to the young people. The 

 youthful salesmen drive their trade at the factories and the ships. 

 The buyer very carefully tests all the eggs, selecting the good 

 ones, which are usually not in very large proportion to the whole 

 number, and the seller takes his pay and goes with the rejected 

 eggs to the next customer. He takes the best he can find out of 

 the lot, and the seller goes on till he generally manages to dispose 

 of most of his stock. Sometimes a chicken pecks through the egg- 

 shell while the bargain is going on. This vexes the European, 

 but is very enjoyable to the native ; for are we not fond of teasing 

 those we love ? The egg-merchant uses his mouth for a porte- 

 monnaie, and puts coin after coin into it ; when he has to make 

 change, he spits his fund into his hand, and picks out the needed 

 six- and three-penny pieces. 



The people also keep goats, which they eat and Europeans do 

 not ; swine, whose flesh Europeans reject ; in the interior, very 

 small cows, which furnish good meat ; dogs ; and in the way of 

 pets, parrots, monkeys, chameleons, and crabs. — Translated for the 

 Popular Science Monthly from Das Ausland. 



The report of the British Royal Education Commission assumes that if the 

 object of elementary education be the fitting of pupils in general for those 

 duties which they will most probably be called on to perform, instruction in sci- 

 ence is only second in importance to instruction in reading, writing, and arith- 

 metic. The soundness of this view is illustrated by the fact, also declared in the 

 report, that the preponderance of opinion among the teachers examined is that no 

 subject is better calculated to awaken the interest and intelligence of the pupils 

 than science. 



vol. xxxv. — 48 



