Clarke, John Specimens of Dialects (Beckwith - Upon - Tweed, England: 1848). Edited by Edwin Ardener with biographical note By Shirley Ardener. The first written vocabulary of the Kenyang language was Clarke’s who may have collected the words as well as well as others in many African dialects in the West Indies or in Fernando Po. He worked as a missionary in both places.

Ashu’s Chronicle in Section 20 of Polyglotta Africana (London: 1854) is the first historical reference to Besongabang Chiefdom. Ashu gives an account of where he came from and how he got to Freetown, Sierra Leone to a German missionary Sigismund Koelle; sent to that country by the Church Missionary Society to collect the languages of freed slaves from all over the Western Coast of Africa.

Ashu states that he was sold as a slave by the King of Besongabang for slaying a man who had sexual relations with one of his two wives. His account also confirms the Aiyuk Etayak Clan relationship as he states that Etemetek is the Capital City of the Banyangs. According to Koelle, Ashu was about forty years old at the time he gave his account in 1848 which puts his date of birth in Besongabang at about 1808. Ashu confirmed that there were about one hundred Banyang ex slaves in Freetown at that time.

Professors Nwokeji and Eltis of the University of Connecticut at Storrs have recently announced that they have a list of 1000 Banyang, Tikari, Bakossi and other Cameroonian people freed by British Man O’War Ships from six slave ships bound for the Americas between 1822 and 1832.

Hopefully, Ashu’s name and other Banyang names will feature on this list and give us a glimpse at the circumstances of Banyang country and its peoples at the start of the 1800s and probably before that. Contacts have been established with the two professors and the entire list will be obtained and studied. Further research will be undertaken in the West Indies and Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone. ;

The Woermann Shipping Line set up an African base on the Kamerun River and by 18882 was running a mail boat service (Hamburg-Westafrika). A German protectorate of the coastal area round Douala (1884) was extended to Lake Chad in 1894. Further territory was acquired from France in 1911-12.

Mail from Kamerun before 1887 can be identified by shipping marks, sometimes on stamps of Germany supplied on board or on arrival in Hamburg from February 01, 1887. Six Post Offices were opened before 1897: Kamerun (Douala), Victoria (1887), Bibundi (1891), Gross-Batanga (1893), and Rio del Rey (1897).

Allied Occupation.

Allied forces in September 27, 19914, captured Douala but the campaign did not end until 1916. (The last German Post Office to be overrun was at Mora on February 18, 1916). On March 04, 1916 the German colony was divided between in 1919 when France reclaimed to Gabon and Moyen Congo the areas ceded in 1911-12. Two mandates were granted by the League of Nations based on de facto partition under British Cameroons.

Southern Cameroons.

The first British Occupation stamps marks can be identified in Southern Cameroons in 1915. This use can be recognized by cancellations of the following offices, (of which those marked were still open in 1960): Victoria, Bakebe, Bamenda, Buea, Kumba, Malla, Maiduzi, Muyuka, Ndian, Nsau (Nso), Nyasoso, Rio del Rey, Tiko and Tinto.