At Gaboon, in the French Congo, one sees all the successive stages in the process of civilization. First, there is the savage, whose whole apparel is a little palm-oil and a bit of calico half the size of a pocket-handkerchief; then there is the man who wears “two fathoms” of cloth wound about him gracefully and falling below his knees; next, there is the man who wears this same robe with a shirt; then the man who discards the native robe and wears a shirt and trousers, but with the shirt always outside the trousers; and, last of all, the gentleman who wears his shirt inside his trousers. These several classes are somewhat distinct. One does not classify the man with a taste for simplicity who wears a rice-sack with holes for his head and arms; nor the untutored dude who wears a pink Mother Hubbard or a lady’s undergarment. These freakish modes represent attempts to hasten the process of civilization and to pass prematurely from one of the above classes to another. In general, the distinction of _culotte_ and _sansculotte_ indicates the difference between the Mpongwe—the old coast tribe—and the Fang—the interior tribe, who have only reached the coast in recent years. The Mpongwe is the most civilized of all the tribes south of the Calabar River. Many of them, besides wearing trousers, live in _deck-houses_, that is, houses with wooden floors. The first floor ever seen by the natives was the deck of an English ship; hence the name _deck-house_. It was also from contact with English sailors that the native learned to speak of a “fathom” of cloth. The Mpongwe are the proudest people of West Africa. An African woman is never allowed to marry into an inferior tribe; although the men may do so. And since the Mpongwe have no social equals among the adjacent tribes, it follows that no Mpongwe woman can marry outside of her own tribe, unless with a north-coast man or a white man. The Fang, the great interior tribe, are mere “bush-animals” in the mind of the Mpongwe. A Fang man, though he were perfectly civilized, and even educated in France, would not be allowed the social status of the meanest Mpongwe. The coast women can all speak Fang; for they trade with them and buy their daily food from them; but they are ashamed to be heard speaking it. Often when I addressed them in Fang they would shake their heads as if they had never heard the language before; whereupon I nearly always asked them a question on some matter of interest to themselves; the price of a parrot, for instance, if I knew that the lady was anxious to sell it. Such a question invariably made the dumb to speak.