Cameroon

CAMEROON. - Region of Equatorial Africa that extends from the bottom of the Gulf of Guinea to Chad, to the Logone and to the lower course of the Congo. On the eve of the First World War, the German colony of the same name covered an area of 745,000 sq km. By the Treaty of Versailles (28 June 1919; arts. 119-58) the eastern territories (on the left bank of the Logone; 225,000 sq km) ceded to the German C. in 1911 were returned to France (A.E.F.), and of the remaining territories two mandates were constituted. The larger one, entrusted to France, covers 451,500 sq km with 2.8 million inhabitants (of whom 1.6 million Bantu, 800,000 Sudanese and about 4,000 Europeans); the smaller one, comprising the western strip of the country, was entrusted to Great Britain (88,266 sq km with 926,000 inhabitants), which administratively annexed it to the neighbouring Nigeria.

The coastal zone, low and marshy, has a hot, extremely humid and unhealthy climate; towards the interior, the territory rises into hills and then into a plateau (800-1500 m) that has a less extreme climate, with a dry season, and is better inhabited. Equatorial forest and savannahs dominate the landscape, but the soil lends itself to the most varied crops (cocoa, groundnuts, sesame, banana, coffee, tobacco, etc.) and is susceptible of great development. Unfortunately the population is decimated by diseases (typhus, tuberculosis, sleeping sickness), by inadequate nutrition, by alcoholism and by the labours of transport carried on by men's shoulders. There is no lack of mining possibilities (tin, gold, silver, titanium) and of stock-raising, but the greatest wealth of the C. is still the forest, which covers about 18 million hectares and yields valuable timber and oil palms. Communications are scarce (508 km of railways) and difficult; French C., however, has the magnificent natural port of Douala. Yaoundé (25,000 inhabitants) and Buea (3,000 inhabitants) are the seats of the administration, in the French and British zones respectively.

Giuseppe Carsci

MISSIONS IN THE CAMEROON

Before the Catholics, the Protestants, around the middle of the last century, penetrated into the present region of the C. The Catholics entered it, one may say, with German colonization, following which the entire territory of the colony was erected into an apostolic prefecture of the same name (1890), entrusted to the German Pallottines, and later elevated to a vicariate (1904).

The missionaries' activity extended first to the coastal region, and then to the interior, with the result that in 1913 - one year before the outbreak of the European war - the mission counted 28,469 Catholics and 17,650 catechumens, distributed among 14 principal stations and cared for by 34 fathers, 36 brothers, 29 sisters and 223 catechists. Highly developed was the school activity (200 schools with 20,000 pupils), written propaganda (catechisms, prayer books, linguistic studies) and agricultural and economic work. In 1907 the apostolic experience of those years was, as it were, codified in the norms of the Synod. Shortly before the war (1912) the eastern interior part (New C.) was detached from the vicariate to give rise to the apostolic prefecture of Adamana, entrusted to the priests of the Sacred Heart, and the region of Butiko, in the south, was entrusted to the German fathers of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit. The war burst into the C. as well, and the mission suffered the destruction of churches and stations, and the deportation of several missionaries to England, while others were imprisoned. The missions of the French part passed to the French fathers of the Holy Spirit, the English one to the fathers of the English Mill Hill Institute. At present the missions of the C. are the following: Douala (v.), Yaoundé (v.), Foumban (v.), Doumé and Garoua (v.) in the French C., Buea (v.) in the British C., with a Catholic population approaching half a million.

Giovanni B. Tragella