rem_ duty on most goods. A poll tax is
imposed on the natives. The local revenue (L131,000 in 1905) is
supplemented by an imperial grant, the protectorate in the first
twenty-one years of its existence never having raised sufficient revenue
to meet its expenditure, which in 1905 exceeded L230,000. Order is
maintained by a native force officered by Germans.

_History._--Cameroon and the neighbouring coast were discovered by the
Portuguese navigator, Fernando Po, towards the close of the 15th
century. They were formerly regarded as within the Oil Rivers district,
sometimes spoken of as the Oil Coast. Trading settlements were
established by Europeans as early as the 17th century. The trade was
confined to the coast, the Dualla and other tribes being recognized
intermediaries between the coast "factories" and the tribes in the
interior, whither they allowed no strange trader to proceed. They took a
quantity of goods on trust, visited the tribes in the forest, and
bartered for ivory, rubber and other produce. This method of trade,
called the trust system, worked well, but when the country came under
the administration of Germany, the system broke down, as inland traders
were allowed to visit the coast. Before this happened the "kings" of the
chief trading stations--Akwa and Bell--were wealthy merchant princes.
From the beginning until near the end of the 19th century they were very
largely under British influence. In 1837 the king of Bimbia, a district
on the mainland on the north of the estuary, made over a large part of
the country round the bay to Great Britain. In 1845, at which time there
was a flourishing trade in slaves between Cameroon and America, the
Baptist Missionary Society made its first settlement on the mainland of
Africa, Alfred Saker (1814-1880) obtaining from the Akwa family the site
for a mission station. In 1848 another mission station was established
at Bimbia, the king agreeing to abolish human sacrifices at the funerals
of his great men. Into the Cameroon country Saker and his colleagues
introduced the elements of civilization, and with the help of British
men-of-war the oversea slave trade was finally stopped (_c._ 1875). The
struggles between the Bell (Mbeli) and Akwa families were also largely
composed. In 1858, on the expulsion of the Baptists from Fernando Po
(q.v.), Saker founded at Ambas Bay a colony of the freed negroes who
then left the island, the settlement being known as Victoria. Two years