The coast from 4° to 3° N. Lat. has also a foreign name, “Batanga.” I do not know its origin.
The coast from 3° to 2° N. Lat. is called, by both natives and foreigners, “Benita”; at 1° N., by foreigners, “Corisco,” and by natives, “Benga.” The name “Corisco” was given by Spaniards to an island in the Bay of Benga because of the brilliant coruscations of lightning so persistent in that locality. The Benga dialect is taken as the type of all the many dialects used from Corisco north to Benita, Bata, Batanga, and Kamerun.
From 1° N. to 3° S. is known as the “Gabun country,” with the Mpongwe dialect, typical of its many congeners, the Orungu, Nkâmi (miscalled “Camma”), Galwa, and others.
From 3° S. to the Kongo River, at 6° S., the Loango tribe and dialect called “Fyât” are typical; and the Kongo River represents still another current of tribe and dialect.
In the interior, subtending the entire coast-line as above mentioned, are the several clans of the great Fang tribe, making a fifth distinctly different type, known by the names “Osheba,” “Bulu,” “Mabeya,” and others. The name “Fang” is spelled variously: by the traveller Du Chaillu, “Fañ”; by the French traveller, Count de Brazza, “Pahouin”; by their Benga neighbors, “Pangwe”; and by the Mpongwe, “Mpañwe.” These tribes all have traditions of their having come from the far Northeast.
Before foreign slave-trade was introduced, and subsequently the ivory, rubber, palm-oil, and mahogany trades, the occupations of the natives were hunting, fishing, and agriculture. They subsisted on wild meats, fish, forest fruits and nuts, and the cultivated plantains, cassava, maize, ground-nuts, yams, eddoes, sweet potatoes, and a few other vegetables.
II. The Family.
The family is the unit in native sociology. There is the narrow circle of relationship expressed by the word “ijawe,” plural “majawe” (a derivative of the verb “jaka” = to beget), which includes those of the immediate family, both on the father’s as well as on the mother’s side (i. e., blood-relatives). The wider circle expressed by the word “ikaka” (pl. “makaka”) includes those who are blood-relatives, together with those united to them by marriage.
In giving illustrative native words I shall use the Benga dialect as typical. All the tribes have words indicating the relationships of father, mother, brother, sister. A nephew, while calling his own father “paia,” calls an uncle who is older than himself “paia-utodu”; one younger than himself he calls “paia-ndĕmbĕ.” His own mother he calls “ina,” and his aunts “ina-utodu” and “ina-ndĕmbĕ,” respectively, for one who is older or younger than himself.
A cousin is called “mwana-paia-utodu,” or “-ndĕmbĕ,” as the case may be, according to age. These same designations are used for both the father’s and the mother’s side. A cousin’s consanguinity is considered almost the same as that of brother or sister. They cannot marry. Indeed, all lines of consanguinity are carried farther, in prohibition of marriage, than in civilized countries.