Cameron,

Cameron, a German colony on the west coast of Africa, extending along 9° 8' E. long. from the Cross River to the mouth of the Rio del Rey, and from thence south to a point slightly below 3° N. lat.; the limits in the interior, which is almost unexplored, have not been fixed. The name is derived from the Cameroon River (Port. camarão, 'a shrimp'), which enters the Bight of Biafra opposite Fernando Po by an estuary over 20 miles wide; the stream is for a considerable distance nearly a mile broad, has at some seasons a current of 5 miles an hour, and its yellow waters may be traced far out at sea. The low mangrove swamps that clothe its banks render the climate very trying to Europeans, and traders generally live in hulks, and only store their goods on shore. The natives belong to the Bantu (q.v.) group, the Duallas living nearest the coast; their kings, Bell and Akway, practically wholesale merchants, by their refusal to permit the natives of the interior to trade directly with the Europeans, nearly brought about a war in 1884. As England declined to assume the protectorate, the Germans were appealed to, and on the 14th July 1884 the German flag was hoisted at Cameroon; a governor was appointed, and the whole district taken over, except the small English Baptist station of Victoria, on Ambas Bay, founded in 1858. The country is very fertile; ebony, red-wood, and palm-trees clothing the Cameroon, which also has long been noted as an 'oil river,' and for its cotton and ivory; while many tropical fruits grow wild, and others are cultivated by the wives and slaves who, with his canoes, constitute the wealth of a native. Northwest of the estuary lie the Cameroon Mountains, a volcanic group, which attain a height of 13,746 feet in the peak Mongo ma Lobah ('mount of the gods'). These volcanoes are not extinct, but there has been no eruption within the memory of man, and the highest points are often covered with snow. The highest summit was first attained by Burton and Mann in 1862. See Burton, Abeokuta and the Cameroons Mountains (1863); Reichenow, Die Deutsche Kolonie Kamerun (Berlin, 1884); and Schwarz, Kamerunreise (Leip. 1886).