with the Fan Cannibals. 
225 
scourge the sandfly, I retired after the first review, 
leaving the song, the drum, and the dance to con¬ 
tinue till midnight. Accustomed to the frantic 
noises of African village-life in general, my ears 
here recognized an excess of bawl and shout, and 
subsequent experience did not efface the impres¬ 
sion. But, in the savage and the barbarian, noise, 
like curiosity, is a healthy sign ; the lowest tribes 
are moping and apathetic as sick children; they 
will hardly look at anything, however strange to 
them. 
The rest of my day and week was devoted to 
the study of this quaint people, and the following 
are the results. Those who have dealings with 
the Yb,n universally prefer them in point of 
honesty and manliness to the Mpongwe and Coast 
races; they have not had time to become tho¬ 
roughly corrupt, to lose all the lesser without 
gaining anything of the greater virtues. They 
boast, like John Tod, that they ne’er feared 
the French, and have scant respect for (white) 
persons; indeed, their independence sometimes 
takes the form of insolence. We were obliged to 
release by force the boy Nyongo, and two of Mr. 
Tippet’s women who had been put “ in log”— 
Anglice , in the stocks. They were wanted as 
hostages during the coming war, and this rude 
contrivance was adopted to insure their presence. 
Chastity is still known amongst the Fa^. The 
Q 
1. 
