anthropoids are dolichocephalic as the negroes.  The Gaboon men are often almost black, whilst the women range between dark brown and cafe au lait.  The beard, usually scanty, is sometimes bien fournie, especially amongst the seniors, but, whenever I saw a light-coloured and well-bearded man, the suspicion of mixed blood invariably obtruded itself.  It is said that during the last thirty years they have greatly diminished, yet their habitat is still that laid down half a century ago by Bowdich, and all admit that the population of the river has not been materially affected.

The Mpongwe women have the reputation of being the prettiest and the most facile upon the West African coast.  It is easy to distinguish two types.  One is large-boned and heavy-limbed, hoarse-voiced, and masculine, like the “Ibos” of Bonny and New Calabar, who equal the men in weight and stature, strength and endurance, suggesting a mixture of the male and female temperaments.  Some of the Gaboon giantesses have, unlike their northern sisters, regular and handsome features.  The other type is quasi-Hindu in its delicacy of form, with small heads, oval faces, noses a la Roxolane, lips sub-tumid but without prognathism, and fine almond-shaped eyes, with remarkably thick and silky lashes.  The throat is thin, the bosom is high and well carried, or, as the admiring Arab says, “nejda;” the limbs are statuesque, and the hands and feet are Norman rather than Saxon.  Many Europeans greatly admire these minois mutins et chiffones.[FN#8]

Early in the present century the Mpongwe braided whiskers and side curls, tipping the ends with small beads, and they plaited the front locks to project like horns, after the fashion of the present Fan and other wild tribes.  A custom noticed by Barbot, but apparently obsolete in the days of Bowdich, was to bore the upper lip, and to insert a small ivory pin, extending from nose to mouth.  The painting and tattooing were fantastic and elaborate; and there was a hideous habit of splitting either lip, so as to “thrust the tongue through on ceremonial occasions.”  A curious reason is given for this practice.  “They are subject to a certain distemper very common there, which on a sudden seizes them, and casts them into fits of so long a continuance, that they would inevitably be suffocated, if by means of the split at their upper lip they did not pour into their mouths some of the juice of a certain medicinal herb, which has the virtue of easing and curing the diseased person in a very short time.”

All these things, fits included, are now obsolete.  The men shave a line in the hair like a fillet round the skull, and what is left is coiffe au coup de vent.  The head-dress is a cap, a straw hat, a billy cock, or a tall silk “chimney pot,” the latter denoting a chief; he also sports in full dress a broad coat, ending in a loin cloth of satin stripe or some finer stuff, about six feet long by four and a half broad; it is secured by a kerchief or an elastic waist