The Mpongwe have also some peculiarities in their notions of justice.  If a man murder another, the criminal is put to death, not by the nearest of kin, as amongst the Arabs and almost all wild people, but by the whole community; this already shows an advanced appreciation of the act and its bearings.  The penalty is either drowning or burning alive:  except in the case of a chief or a very rich man, little or no difference is made between wilful murder, justifiable homicide, and accidental manslaughter--the reason of this, say their jurists, is to make people more careful.  Here, again, we find a sense of the sanctity of life the reverse of barbarous.  Cutting and maiming are punished by the fine of a slave.

And now briefly to resume the character of the Mpongwe, a nervous and excitable race of negroes.  The men are deficient in courage, as the women are in chastity, and neither sex has a tincture of what we call morality.  To commercial shrewdness and eagerness they add exceptional greed of gain and rascality; foreign rum and tobacco, dress and ornaments, arms and ammunition have been necessaries to them; they will have them, and, unless they can supply themselves by licit, they naturally fly to illicit means.  Yet, despite threats of poison and charges of witchcraft, they have arrived at an inkling of the dogma that “honesty is the best policy:”  the East African has never dreamed it in the moments of his wildest imagination.  Pre-eminent liars, they are, curious to say, often deceived by the falsehoods of others, and they fairly illustrate the somewhat paradoxical proverb: 

   “He who hates truth shall be the dupe of lies.”

Unblushing mendicants, cunning and calculating, their obstinacy is remarkable; yet, as we often find the African, they are at the same time irresolute in the extreme.  Their virtues are vivacity, mental activity, acute observation, sociability, politeness, and hospitality:  the fact that a white man can wander single-handed through the country shows a kindly nature.  The brightest spot in their character is an abnormal development of adhesiveness, popularly called affection; it is somewhat tempered by capricious ruffianism, as in children; yet it entitles them to the gratitude of travellers.

The language of the Mpongwe has been fairly studied.  T. Edward Bowdich ("Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee,” London, Murray, 1819) when leaving the West Coast for England, touched at the Gaboon in a trading vessel, and visited Naango (King George’s Town), on Abaaga Creek, which he places fifty miles up stream.  He first gave (Appendix vi.) a list of the Mpongwe numerals.  In 1847 the “Missionaries of the A. B. C. F. M.”  Gaboon Mission, Western Africa, printed a “Grammar of the Mpongwe Language, with Vocabularies” (New York,Snowden and Pratt, Vesey Street), perhaps a little prematurely; it is the first of the four dialects on this part of the coast reduced to system by the American Missionaries, especially by the Rev. Mr. Leighton Wilson, the others being Bakele, Benga, and Fan.