The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-02 00:00:00

The Cameroons Mountain.

Captain Burton, the African traveller, recommends that
the Government should try the Cameroons Mountain and
Amboiee Bay, in West Africa, as a penal settlement. In a
letter to the limes, he says :—" The Cameroons Mountain,
rising in the depths of the Bight of Biafra, and within 4.25
deg., or about 300 miles, of the Equator, is not, as has been
supposed, an isolated mass breaking the continuity of the
level of the mangrove-growing coast. I believe it to be
the abutment of a great sierra, which, connected by the
Rumbi' and Qua' hills—they are visible to the naked eye
from the sea—extends in a north-easterly direction to
Mount Alantika. known to Europe by Dr. Barth's travels.
The Cameroons buttress may contain 500 sq. miles of suc-
cessive bush and jungle, wood and forest, grass and barren
ground. If connected, however, with Alantika, the number
might be multiplied by 50. The first work to be expected
from convicts located at Amboiso Bay, at the foot of the
Cameroons, would be a sanitarium. This poisonous coast
calls aloud for some such establishment. During the last
year her Majesty's ship Prometheus, stationed at Lagos,
lost by death and invaliding 84 out of 100 whites. In the
Bonny River it is calculated that, of 280, some 134 died in
78 days. One ship, the Osprey, lost all her crew of 17 men
except the master. The disease was yellow fever, which still
continues in the New Calabar river, while in the Bonny it
has been succeeded by ano less deadly typhus. At Fernando
Po, 76 men died in two months, out of a total of 231 whites.
Returning by the African steamship Athenian, I remarked
that, despite the care of our excellent doctor, every passen-
ger from the coast fell ill ; one officer, who never had had
fever in Africa, suffered from it on board. The first estab-
lishment at Amboiso Bay would be on Mondori Island, an
oval rock some 200 feet high at the entrance to the bay, and
catching the pure Atlantic breezes, which at Clarence Town,
Fernando Po, must pass over a long tract of jungly swamp
backing the settlement. The second station—it is unwire
to transport fever patients suddenly from low ground to
high altitudes—would be on Mount Henry, an eminence
about 150 miles from the mission station on the beach, and
upwards of 1,500 feet above sea level. The third would be a
ledge of ground, grass-grown, but not wholly out of the
wooded region, 7,000 ft. high, and sheltered from the N.E.
wind by a formation which my companions and I called the
Black Crater. A stream of degraded lava leads to this, the
highest point where European invalids might be settled, and
cutting and zigzagging* would easily render it practicable
for four-footed animals. Above the Black Crater all is grass
and clover, lava and clinker. In places the land is level
enough for pleasant riding ' • snow could bo stored for the
whole year, and those who enjoy cold can pass a night or
two at Saker's Camp,' whore at dawn the mercury stands
below zero, the blankets are stiff, and the noble peak is hoar
with frost. Being unprepared to assert in England that
felony would justify divorce, and not unacquainted with
the horrors of Norfolk Island, I agree with Mr. Laird in
thinking it no small advantage that the convicts who prove
orderly and industrious should be able to intermarry with
the women of the country. With respect to the chances of
escape, a bottle of rum given to the natives would bring in
any fugitive ; and, as the lowlands are deadly, as the high-
lands aro healthy, as all the craft upon this coast is so frail
that even the half amphibious negroes often lose their lives
—and, finally, as the mountain, though thinly populated
and wholly desert above an altitude of 3,000 ft. is almost
surrounded by populous regions, full of well armed men,
commanded by General Tazo, alias swamp fever—it is not
to be expected that a convict station in Western Africa will
ever breed a race of bushrangers."