FELOOPS— BISSAGOES. 
S77 
committed by Europeans, they never give quarter 
to a white man. 
The Bissagoes or Bijugas inhabit a chain of low 
islands, which lie off the Rio Grande. They are 
tall, resolute, and robust, and adorn their houses 
with the scalps of their enemies. Impatient of 
slavery, they murder themselves upon receiving 
an affront ; intrepid in war, they are believed to 
be sprung from the terrible Giagas or Jagas, 
They are extremely ingenious, and easily learn 
whatever they are taught. On Boulama, or ra- 
ther Bulama, which lies in the mouth of the Rio 
Grande, and is enumerated among the group of 
the Bissagoes, a colony was planted in 179^? by 
an association who assumed their name from the 
island. Bulama is about eighteen miles in length, 
and in some places almost as many in breadth. 
The land rises gradually from the shore to the 
centre of the island, which is about one hundred 
feet above the level of the sea, and lies in N, lat. 
IV and W. long. 15° from the meridian of Lon- 
don. When settled by Lieutenant Philip Beaver, 
who conducted the expedition, it had been for 
a considerable time uninhabited j the Bissagoes 
having expelled the Biafaras, the former possessors, 
and only resorting to it themselves to hunt, and 
plant maize and rice : It had been at three dif- 
ferent times proposed to the French government 
for colonization j in 1700 by De la Brue, in I767 
